The Black Corsair
by Helen1969
Summary: Six years after the events of "Corpse Flower", Harlock and company are once more facing an ancient foe, this time thanks to the actions of a pirate calling himself The Black Corsair... The Gate of Yedar has opened enough to let in the vanguard of what might be the most dangerous enemy the crew of the Arcadia have ever faced - and old secrets finally see the light of day...
1. Prologue

Of course, it _started _as a story about kidnapping and revenge... It's about pirates, after all.

* * *

_**Prologue**_

I've never been much of a morning person; I tend to be a tad grumpy until I've had my first coffee, however briefly the effects last these days. But one thing I don't get - as a side benefit of a massive exposure to dark matter over the last eighteen years or so - is a hangover.

I had the mother of all such right now. I groaned and opened my eyes, only to realise I was either totally blind or in complete darkness.

I was also totally naked. And I wasn't alone. There was a body on either side of me, no warmer than I was but definitely alive. I didn't need my working eye to tell me who one of them was, since my hand rested on a shoulder with a familiar wide scar across it that told me Kei was nestled against me.

The naked man lying with his back against my back however… that was a mystery, because I was pretty sure it hadn't been _that _kind of party the night before...

After a few seconds, I realised I wasn't totally in darkness. There was a thin sliver of light coming from behind me, and it did at least show me a couple of things: firstly, I was lying on the floor of a cell of some type, and from the feel of the vibration in the floor, I was on a spaceship in motion. The room was small, unfurnished, with a metal door. The light came from a small sconce in the wall that would allow just enough light for a low light camera to broadcast our movements to the guard station but not enough to help the average prisoner see what they were doing.

Well, I'm very far from average these days.

Kei was unharmed as far as I could tell, but still out cold. The man… I eased myself out reluctantly from underneath Kei's warmth, and wriggled around slowly so that I could get a better look, although I didn't need much of one: shoulder length silvering hair that had once been close to my own dark wet sand; beard; My height, a little thicker around the middle. An apparently well-preserved sixty-something that I knew full well was considerably under half his actual age. Even if it _had _been that kind of party, I'd have known something was off. He was my great-something grandfather for Earth's sake. And Kei's for that matter, with an extra great or so thrown in.

Kei was still out, but _he_ stirred as I watched, then opened his eyes.

You can tell a lot about a man - or woman - from how they wake up. Those of us who've lived with a price on their heads for years don't tend to be the types to flail about and launch themselves at whatever unfortunate makes the mistake of waking them up abruptly. We're the ones who learn to wait, to feign sleep, to listen, watch through mostly closed lids and make sure of our surroundings. Do it right and some idiot eventually comes in close to get a curious prod in. And _that's _when you go for the fool's throat. So I kept my distance and spoke quietly. 'Hannibal.'

'Harlock.' He sat up slowly, winced, and placed a hand to his left temple. I waited until he'd finished his own survey of the room and his gaze came back to mine. 'Funny. I didn't think it was that kind of party…'

Since my last memory was of the three of us sitting in a quiet corner of a shabby tavern on Heavy Meldar - a place usually so devoid of inhabitants you could conduct any business there without much chance of being overheard by anything higher up the evolutionary tree than a wandering tumbleweed - there really was only one explanation. And I was never, ever living this down once I got back to my ship. 'Seems we got careless.'

'Mickied?' he snorted. 'How the hell does that happen? All three of us can metabolise that kind of crap before it does much harm.' He looked over at Kei. 'Is she…?'

'Woke up a few seconds after you did,' I said blithely. I grinned down at her even though she wouldn't make it out clearly. It earned me a weak thump on my arm for my pains. 'It's cute you still think I don't know when you're faking it,' I told her as I helped her to sit up. Given the ambient temperature of the room and the cold floor we had our naked arses on, I put my arm around her and she snuggled against me to still her shivers - some of which wouldn't be down to the cold. Kei's had far less exposure than either I or Hannibal had gotten over the years, and anything strong enough to knock us out was going to make her very sick for a while whilst she threw it off. I looked at Hannibal, feeling only slightly guilty about not offering my other side.

'I'll pass,' he said drily. 'I'm not feeling the cold that much just yet.' He stood up and his bare feet slapped on the metal floor as he walked over to the wall. He pressed his palm against part of it and a bunk slid down. 'Standard configuration on Solar System Fleet vessels of a certain age,' he continued, before I could ask. 'We're in a brig on an old ship.'

I got to my feet and helped Kei to hers. Between us we settled her on the bunk with a blanket around her. Hannibal and I sat on either side of her, letting her draw whatever warmth she could from the pair of us. 'A pre-war vessel?' he nodded. I frowned. 'An old ship but whoever's in charge knew how to take out people with accelerated metabolisms, which means they've had dealings with either you, me or your brother at some point. Don't know about you but I can't recall having been stupid enough to leave anyone I've pissed off this much alive…'

'Your brother's copy?' Kei asked from somewhere on my chest.

'Tends to help himself to the best new shiny toys,' I countered. 'He wouldn't be seen dead in an old junker.'

'An old junker? I'll have you know the _Lightning _is still one of the fastest ships in the galaxy!' the voice came from a speaker next to the door. I grinned at Hannibal.

'Well the accommodations aren't up to much,' I called out. 'And judging from the vibration, your inertial dampeners are in need of an overhaul, which doesn't fill me with much confidence - ending up splattered against a bulkhead isn't how I plan on going out.'

The door opened letting in far too much light, and all three of us had to shield our eyes, blinking furiously until the afterimages had started to fade. Once they did, we were facing and flanked by three burly brutes in scruffy coveralls, armed with antique but quite obviously well-cared for blasters. One of these gorillas stood aside to allow a smaller man to step forward: a couple of inches shorter than me, probably somewhere in his fifties and unlike me actually looking it. He had curly, greying blond hair and a pencil thin moustache. Gimlet sharp blue eyes looked me up and down with a satisfied smile. He nodded to himself.

'I didn't think you would be quite so easy to capture, senhor Harlock.' His accent was pronounced, but not one I could place. 'Please excuse the facilities - I was instructed to take no chances. Your clothes will be returned to you - we had of course to search you.'

'Of course,' I muttered darkly. 'And I suppose that won't include our weapons?'

He laughed.

'I take it that's a no?' I continued, giving him what Ali calls my best "shit-eating grin".

His answer was a wide grin equally as false as my own. 'Your reputation precedes you, senhor. Yours and the young lady's. The gentleman with you I do not know - a crewmember?'

I knew better than to try bluffing with a "yes". Something about this guy - affable though he appeared, had tripped my internal alarm bell. I let Hannibal take the lead.

'An agent for the Millennial Thieves,' Hannibal offered smoothly. 'We had business to discuss.'

'Name?'

'Alex Schenk. You'll find my ID in my jacket.'

'I'm very sure I will find _an _ID in your pocket, senhor _Schenk…' _The twinkle in his eye suggested he was in on a joke no-one else in the room wa_s. _He nodded to one of his crew. 'Bring their clothes, and feed them. I'm afraid you'll be our guests for a few days.' He smiled into my face. 'Capitão Harlock. You are, I'm told, a man of honour.'

'Yes.'

He nodded. 'Good. Your parole… your word, then, that neither you nor your companions will attempt to escape, disrupt my ship or attack any of my men. If you agree to behave, I shall have you moved to crew quarters, until we meet with _my _capitão. Si? We have an accord?'

I inclined my head in agreement and ignored Kei's elbow digging me in the ribs. She'd have to put up with it - in space, we weren't going anywhere. 'On that, you have my word.'

He laughed again and this time the amusement was genuine. I didn't think for a moment he'd mistaken what I'd agreed to. 'Your captain isn't on board?' I asked just before he turned for the door. He turned back and shrugged.

'My captain? No. This is my ship. I command the _Lightning_. Good day to you, senhors, senhora. Vasco here -' he nodded to one of his hulking gorillas: dark-skinned, black-haired, dark-eyed and muscled like a prize bull '- will see you to better quarters once you are dressed.'

'Do you have a name?' Kei asked. 'You seem to know ours…'

'Yanez, senhora Kei. You may call me Yanez.' He sketched an impressive and rather elaborate formal bow.

All of them marched from the room - the older man with a hitch in his step that I could relate to, that hinted of an old injury. The door shut behind them, but he was as good as his word. Almost as soon as they'd left, the lights came on, and a young woman re-entered carrying a large tray, which she placed on the table that slid out of the wall at a murmured command. She was followed by another crewman - this time a young man, who left our clothes on the floor just inside the door and backed away blushing when Kei stood up to go and claim her portion of them. The woman seemed to be made of sterner stuff, eyeing both myself and Hannibal up with an appreciative gaze, until she caught Kei glaring at her, at which point she gulped and scuttled out as fast as she could, the door irising closed behind her.

'Did you just death-glare that poor girl?' I asked as I pulled on my pants. I threw Hannibal his, since the lazy-bastard gene seemed to run in that side of the family. I'd have argued it had been diluted by now, except for the fact that my twin sons are a pair of slobs who have to be badgered into cleaning up after themselves, and their younger sister's even worse.

'She was staring at you. There might have been drool…'

'So? I'm worth staring at.' I snatched my sweater off the pile and stayed out of arm's reach.

Hannibal chuckled. 'I'll never understand why this family seems to like living dangerously when it comes to their women.' He took a look at the contents of the tray and sighed. 'Oh joy. MREs…So much for feeding us.' He threw one of the pouches to me and I caught it neatly. Kei he handed one to, being the gentleman that he is. 'Interesting situation,' he continued, between mouthfuls. 'That ID's perfectly legit, but he almost called me out on it. There's no way in hell anyone knows I'm anyone else.'

'Maybe it's you he's after?' I suggested after struggling to swallow a sporkful of something supposed to be a chicken casserole. If any part of it had ever been covered in feathers, I've got two working eyeballs… 'I'm getting a weird vibe. I don't think he's a bounty hunter.'

'He's taking us to see another captain,' Kei mused aloud. 'We only know one "captain" who commands multiple ships, and this guy doesn't strike me as one of Hunter's men.'

'Nope.' I stared glumly at another sporkful of pale, anaemic looking mush. 'Too articulate, too smart, and has a sense of humour. Plus the last time we ran into Hunter, he swore he'd have me shot on sight rather than risk his men getting into it with us.'

'Shows how dumb he is,' Kei snorted. 'He'd have to kill an awful lot of people to avoid retribution. Starting with me.' She delved into her own meal, eating daintily but enthusiastically. 'What?' she mumbled through a mouthful, when we both looked at her.

'I still don't know how you can do that.' I shuddered.

'You can't possibly be enjoying that…' Hannibal looked about as disgusted with his pouch as I was with mine.

'You two…' she jabbed her spork in our direction. 'Are spoiled. Neither of you really appreciates what it's like to not know where your next meal's coming from.'

Now that was unfair… I'd had my share of rough times, and she knew it. And I was pretty sure Hannibal hadn't always had the best of luck in his long life. She sighed. 'Don't either of you give me those looks. You were both born wealthy and privileged. You bitch about times like these because you expect them to go away and stop bothering you eventually. Because - how dare they? Don't they know who you are? But what if this is that time when your luck runs out? You can't _know_.' She jabbed the back of my hand with her plastic utensil. 'Eat, and quit moaning about the food. I need both of you sharp. We've no idea what we're up against.'

Hannibal and I exchanged meaningful looks ™. Which is something that even though we've known each other for a couple of years now is still a little freaky, given that he looks a lot like an older version of myself, to the point where Kei oftens feels the need to point out that it's nice to know I'll age well.

We both know however when we're beaten: we ate.

* * *

Captain Yanez was as good as his word. We were escorted - under arms but politely - to more salubrious quarters - and by that I mean that the room we were moved to was about the same size as the brig, but sported two pairs of narrow bunks, a table, chairs and a head/washroom. 'Showers are three doors along on the port side,' the young crewman who'd been staring at Kei's breasts earlier told us. Even though she was now covered up by a clinging, soft, cream cashmere sweater, he didn't seem able to keep his sticky eyes off them, and I was sorely tempted to remind him where to look by means of a slap to the back of the head before Kei did him more permanent damage.

The look on my face must have finally registered, because he gulped, tried for the cheery grin, and when that failed, scuttled out with his tail between his legs. Literally: He was a chthonian.

He didn't lock the door on the way out. Hannibal tested it and hmmphed. 'No locks. Figures - they won't want us barricading ourselves in.'

'Mind games,' I replied. I sat down on one of the folding chairs. 'Rather like putting us all in together. I mean - he knows Kei and I are a couple, keeps us together but no privacy? And I'd probably dislocate something trying it on in one of those bunks.'

Kei sniggered. 'We used to manage…'

'I was younger,' I pointed out. 'Don't let the pretty-boy looks fool you, I'm not as flexible as I used to be…'

She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly at that bouncer, but took her cue from me. I carried enough scars for Yanez and his crew to see I'd taken some punishment over the years. It wouldn't hurt to play up my old leg injury a bit and let them think that a woman, an old man and the slightly-past-his-prime pirate were not as threatening as they might have heard. A long shot, but in our business, you take every angle you can find.

Hannibal took the seat opposite to mine, and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. 'I've never heard of a Captain Yanez…' he mused. 'I thought I knew all of the players in this galaxy.'

'New player?' Kei asked. She sat on the edge of one of the bunks.

'He doesn't strike me as a new player.' I leaned back in my chair. 'Confident but not cocky. And there was something about the way he mentioned his captain…' I looked at Kei, who smiled.

'Sounded like one of our boys talking about you.'

I smiled back. 'In one. So, he's loyal, and whoever he's loyal to earned that. Notice he knew damn well I was being very careful to limit my promise, but didn't care. His captain's someone he thinks can handle us, and do so easily. He knows who I am at least, and you…' I nodded to Kei. 'And again it doesn't bother him. Which tells me his captain has an equally impressive reputation - at least in his mind, and he didn't strike me as the sycophantic type.'

Hannibal folded his arms and smiled. 'You got all of that from a few sentences?'

I shrugged nonchalantly. 'Training and long experience. I wouldn't have lasted long if I couldn't size people up quickly and accurately.'

'And yet… your brother…' he murmured.

I glared at him. 'Not letting that go, are you?' I growled. 'Remind me again at what point you realised _yours _was batshit insane?'

Kei sighed and stood up with a flounce. 'If you two are going to start arguing again, I'm going for a shower.'

'Not alone you don't,' I said before she could reach the door. 'Affable our host might be, but we were drugged and kidnapped right on our home turf.'

She sniffed, as though annoyed with me for doubting her ability to take care of herself. Which I didn't, but no-one listening would know that.

In the corridor, two crewmen stood guard - or at least, leaning against the walls, one in each direction, looking as though they were just loitering casually. Didn't fool either of us: it's a trick Ali's taught most of the guys on the _Arcadia. _'Port?' I asked Kei, trying my best to look as though I can't tell one end of a spaceship from another. She rolled her eyes, took my hand and dragged me off to the left.

Stripped off and under running water, we finally had a chance to talk openly. I defy anyone to lip-read through the steamy haze of hot water pouring - or in this case dribbling - down. 'Ship's in good repair despite that slight vibration,' Kei said quietly as I rubbed her back. 'Crew dress scruffy, but it's as much a front as yours is. Everything's vintage but well cared for. Weapons too. Crew are well trained - almost didn't spot the signals passing between those jokers in the corridors, and those thugs in the brig were anything but. No calluses on the hands of the big red head, did you notice?'

'Actually I spotted the indentations on the sides of his nose where his glasses sit,' I replied with a grin. 'Now for the acid test… did they find your transmitter?'

She ran a hand over her stomach, and pressed against a small scar lost in a silvery line. 'Still there. Any scan should show only the contraceptive implant. Luna and Maji pulled a good one there. You?'

I'd already found the tiny, already healing cut on my right thigh. 'Scratch that. We just have to hope we're not out of range.' Mine was the stronger beacon, mostly because I can hide it against a backdrop of pins and plates from an old injury. But I trusted our crew to be able to track us.

Assuming of course we hadn't already moved out of sub-space transmission range before anyone contacted the Arcadia and told them we'd gone missing. If we had, then we were in big trouble.

'Plan?' Kei asked me, placing her hand behind my head and pulling me towards her for a lingering kiss. Purely for the cameras, if anyone was watching, and if this was my ship, you can be damned sure someone would be.

'For now? We wait,' I said once I came up for air. 'I don't think we're in much danger from anything except the food until we reach their captain, and I did give my word.' The water was starting to cool and I reached for the controls. 'We do have one problem,' I teased, just before I switched off the water.

'Umm?'

'How the hell do I arrange to have these private chats with _Hannibal_?'

I had to wonder if the poor schmuck on the other end of any monitors would be wondering why Kei had a sudden attack of the giggles as we hit the dryers.

* * *

Mostly on a whim, since I didn't really expect anyone to tell me, I stopped in front of the guard who stood between us and the door to our new quarters. 'Excuse me.'

He looked at me, relaxed and chirpy. Not at all the surly attitude I'd come to expect under circumstances like these. But then, I'd been spoiled by Count Lazarus and Hunter, I suppose.

'Yes?'

'Your captain - not of this ship, but the man we're going to see. The one who apparently wants to see me so badly he can't be bothered to just walk up and ask me nicely?'

A shrug. 'Il Capitano says "fetch him"? Capitano Yanez volunteered. 'We fetched.' A huge grin spread across the man's weather-lined face. Wherever he was from he spent far more time outdoors than he did on a spaceship, which was interesting. Out of the corner of my left eye I spotted Hannibal sticking his head around the doorway. The man was almost as nosy as I am…

'Does he have a name?'

This guard turned to his compatriot languishing idly further down the corridor. 'He wants to know Il Capitano's name!' he said this as though it was some kind of a joke, and his friend laughed out loud. 'You do not know?'

I bit back the sarcastic comment on the tip of my tongue. Settled for a shake of my head.

'Surely even in this backwater you have heard the name of the greatest pirate who ever sailed the oceans of space!'

'Is he yanking my chain?' I stage whispered to Kei. 'I thought that was me…'

'You?' More laughter. 'Yes, we've heard of Il Capitano Harlock, but for years, nothing but a story to scare rookies spitless whilst we're on a late shift… A myth, until you came along.' I was looked up and down and this occasioned more laughter. 'They said you were seven feet tall dressed all in black, with fire flashing from your eye and death in your heart. You… not so much.'

I knew that choked snigger from my side and bit my tongue. For years she's been telling me to dress the part, and now she was never, ever going to let me live this down.

'I'm in disguise.'

'Good disguise,' our guard nodded slyly, with a wink to his comrade. 'We're fooled by the scruffy spacer look.'

'Totally,' his companion added, struggling to keep a straight face.

I didn't dare look at Hannibal. And I was never so thankful that Ali wasn't here to share this one. He'd have been dining out on it for months. 'But your captain?' I pressed.

'Our captain? Our captain is the Terror of Andromeda!' he declaimed, almost hitting me in the face with the hand he was gesticulating with. 'Il Corsaro Nero! The captain of the battleship "Thunder". Lord of Relâmpago Azul!'

Now it was Hannibal's turn to make choking noises.

'A name would be nice,' I broke in. 'Before you run out of superlatives.'

He grinned at me, revealing a gap-toothed smile. 'No man alive knows his real name, but we call him Captain Nero.'

'Never heard of him,' I replied brightly, and walked past him and into our tiny room. Kei shut the door behind me and we both faced Hannibal, who looked as though he'd seen a ghost. 'Well?' I asked, when enlightenment seemed not to be forthcoming any time soon.

'Relâmpago Azul.'

I shook my head. It meant nothing to me and I said so. Kei looked equally blank. Hannibal sighed.

'It's Portuguese - an old Earth language, which I think is the native language of that Captain Yanez. It means "blue lightning".'

I sat down rather heavily on the edge of the left hand bunk. 'Oh.'

Kei sat beside me. 'Does that mean what I think…'

'Remember how we were looking for the _Deathshadow One_?' I asked her. She nodded, 'I rather think her captain just found _us…'_


	2. Chapter 1

_Author's note: I was looking for an actor I remembered from my youth, who was the visual inspiration for what was originally a background character in "Waterfall" and "Sandstorm"... An internet search turned up Kabir Bedi… and it turned out that in addition to the film I remembered seeing him in, he'd also starred as two of Emilio Salgari's pirates: Il Corsario Nero, and Sandokan, round about the same time Harlock first began to strut his stuff across our screens..._

_I honestly couldn't resist. The rest, as they say, is fanfic…_

_For those interested: I have conflated Salgari's two pirates here, along with taking other liberties with the source material, and most of it is from the Black Corsair movie and the TV series for Sandokan, rather than the books. Much of the rest is derived from Endless Odyssey, certain "developments" in the GE999/Harlock verse since the mid-90s, and the recent Sengoku no Arcadia web manga..._

_Now: onward! Enjoy...!_

* * *

**Planet MX-201 "Heavy Meldar"**

'What do you mean "they're not here"?' A large man in a green sweater, blond hair and long sideburns leaned on the bar counter and grabbed the tubby barman by the collar, hauling him into a puddle of beer. 'How can three people - three people you have a vested interest in being nice to - vanish from your damn bar on a planet with a population in double digits?' The gold scarab pendant he wore clanged off the metal railing as he let the petrified bartender go with a snarl. 'Fuck.'

A tall dark haired man - apparently in his late twenties - strode through the swing half-doors of the saloon with a cloud of dust and a pair of tousled-haired boys in his wake. Whilst the youths made a beeline for the bar, he brushed dust off the shoulder of a long black duster, and then shook his head to get more of the same out of his hair, revealed as almost black with the worst of the sand out of it.

'I've been trying to tell you,' the bartender babbled as the other man drew closer. 'The Captain and Miss Kei were talking to that old geezer in the corner booth…' he waved a hand in the direction of the dark corner at the back of the room, facing the door. 'And these three guys who'd come in a couple of days earlier wanted their lunch, so I had to go in the back to give their order to the cook. Something hit my neck and the next thing I know, me and Cookie are waking up with massive headaches, and we've lost a whole day. Oh - and the new barmaid we took on last month? She's gone as well.' He glanced at the two boys who leaned nonchalantly on his bar and gulped. Both boys were dark haired - the shorter of the pair black haired under the grey dust. The taller of the two had a scar across his left cheek and a white patch over his right eye. Both wore gun belts with holstered pistols in them not dissimilar to those sported by the older men, although neither looked older than fifteen.

'Ali.' The one-eyed boy laid a hand on the blond thug's arm. 'Not his fault. We searched the girl's room - cleared out completely, and not a DNA scrap to be found. Whoever she was, she was a pro.'

'We found traces outside of town where a shuttle landed - from the footprint, it's an old model, and that tracks with the readings Maji's sent down from the time radar trace. There was a ship in orbit - an old one. Gave a registry out of Metabloody but that's a dead end - false flag.'

'There's no girl matching her description in our register of known bounty hunters,' the duster-clad man added as he reached them. He sat on a barstool and nodded to the bartender. 'Even allowing for a really good disguise, none of them are even close to _that _dainty. Master - two whiskies and two sodas.'

'Soda. Really?' The one-eyed boy rolled his visible eye. The other youth just smirked.

'You want to risk the coffee here, be my guest,' the dark man replied dryly. 'But on my watch neither of you is drinking hard liquor…'

The blond man - Ali - snorted. 'Doesn't do much damage to either of them,' he pointed out, grabbing his tumbler as the barman sent it along the counter to him. 'Ta. And sorry for the grabbing. Kind of getting a bit twitchy.' He glared at the other man though. 'What possessed you though to bring the small fry along, Blaze?'

A shrug. 'Got the alert when Hannibal didn't make it back to his ship. Farah was going berserk when he didn't get back to the _Miranda _on time. He almost worships the old man. He called me, and I was en route to Tabito to run this pair of miscreants back from their field trip to Niflheim.' He downed the amber liquid in his tumbler and set it down on the counter. 'But happy to hand over Mamoru here to your care, now you're here. I've got enough on my plate with my kid brother here…' he ruffled the shorter lad's hair and grinned at the "gerroff" he earned for his trouble.

'Mom and Dad wouldn't go quietly if there was a confrontation,' Mamoru piped up. He took a sip of the drink he'd been given and pulled a face. 'Sugar free? Really?' He pushed it back at the bartender who smiled apologetically and set about filling a new glass. This next one presumably met with his approval, because he kept his hand curled around it after the first swallow. 'My guess is they - whoever they are - drugged them. Barmaid was in on it, and if she'd been here a while, and the barkeep vouched for her, they wouldn't have been too cautious.' He frowned. 'You'd think they'd be more careful though…'

'In a place they know?' the other boy pointed out. 'Plus - practically immune to meds and poisons, remember?'

Mamoru nodded. 'Rei has a point…'

'I usually do.' It was said laconically, a statement of fact, without pride. 'But who'd take them? Bounty hunters wouldn't bother with Hannibal - he's not a criminal or a pirate.'

'That's something I can get our people on,' Blaze replied. He stared thoughtfully at the corner table as though he could somehow see what had transpired there. 'Emilia and I will send out some feelers, tug on a few strings and see if anyone has heard anything.'

'Bit vague,' Ali retorted. He downed his drink and placed a handful of credits on the counter. 'Maji and Yattaran are trying to get a trace on Kei's and the Captain's transponders. But they've been gone for a week, local time. They could be halfway across the galaxy by now.'

'In the _Arcadia_,' Mamoru pointed out. 'Not so much in some old crate like the one they left in.'

'Farah's looking in the _Miranda's _database for a match,' Rei added. He gave his long thin nose a scratch. 'If the shuttle belonged to it, and most do because hangar configuration was often bespoke from model to model, we should find a type, which will give us its maximum speed and refuelling range.' He glanced at his friend as Mamoru started tapping his fingers idly on the counter. 'Okay… what?'

'Just wondering…' Mamoru said thoughtfully. 'Blaze - can you send a shuttle up to the _Marin _for Freya?'

'Sure, but what's going through that sneaky head of yours?'

Mamoru grinned, a far too adult feral smile for his age. 'Don't need to wait for Emilia, Blaze. We've got three people who've been living and breathing dark matter for years - one of them for over a century. And if Freya found me all those years ago when the Mazone kidnapped me…' here he didn't manage to stop a reflexive urge to run a finger across the scar on his face and touch the eyepatch over his right eye.

'...she shouldn't have any problem tracking the old man and the Captain…' Ali grinned nastily. 'Hah. Bet they didn't think of that.' He snapped his fingers almost under Rei's nose.

Rei and Mamoru exchanged glances. 'They knew enough to use something that could knock out three people with a serious dark matter contamination,' Rei pointed out. 'Kind of suggests they planned this.'

'Someone also picked a time when the _Arcadia _and the _Miranda _were diverted for a distress call that we were honour-bound to answer but wasn't serious enough for either captain to feel they had to drop everything and go with,' Ali added, his scowl deepening. 'If it wouldn't cost us time I'd pop back to KZ-486 and question those damn passengers we dropped off…'

'We've got three ships,' Blaze pointed out as he perched on a barstool, flicking the long skirts of his duster out of the way. 'We'll send the _Marin _back to check that angle out, I'll join Farah and Emilia on the _Miranda_. The _Arcadia _can't take point though - not with Lazarus marauding unchecked in this sector. He gets even a sniff that Harlock's gone wandering, or is missing…'

Ali folded his arms across his chest and glared past Blaze's shoulder. 'Of all the bloody times…' Then he unfolded and jabbed a finger at Blaze. 'Well I ain't staying behind to fly her whilst the Captain and Kei are in trouble, and I wouldn't put any of the others in charge. Gonna take a firm hand on the wheel. With Ben dallying with Her Mazonic Majesty again over in the Greater Magellanic, we're a little short on combat commanders.'

Mamoru tapped Blaze on the shoulder.

'Absolutely not!'

Mamoru pouted. 'Please. I wasn't going to suggest me, Blaze. Why not ask Emilia to swap places with you? She runs back to Tabito and grabs Selen. Selen can transfer the Thieves' command to the _Arcadia _for the duration, and the rest of us use the _Miranda _to go looking for Mom, Dad and Gramps? She's as fast as the _Arcadia_, and much less noticeable…'

Ali and Blaze traded looks. 'Might work,' Blaze murmured.

'No-one's going to object to Selen, that's for sure,' Ali mused. He jabbed a finger at Mamoru. 'But you're not coming along so you can forget the "us" part.'

Mamoru opened his mouth and snapped it shut again, a mulish glint in his brown eye. At his side, Rei smirked.

'Nor you,' Blaze interjected, earning himself a filthy look from his younger brother. 'Mom would tear my arms off if anything happened to you.'

'You do remember I'm not _actually _a teenager, right?' Rei drawled. 'And technically…'

'Technical my arse, Rei. I'm still older than you, I'm still your older brother, and if I tell you you're sitting this one out, you're sitting it out.'

Mamoru grabbed his friend's arm and dragged him out of the fray before he could say anything that would totally shut down any chance of talking their way into the rescue, shooting Blaze his best apologetic smile - the one he'd perfected after years of running interference for his twin, Wataru, and his main partner in crime, Taro. 'Shut the fuck up for a minute,' he hissed into Rei's ear as he dragged him to a corner table. 'Or we'll be back on the _Arcadia_ before you can draw breath with no hope of sneaking off.'

'You've got a plan?'

Mamoru grinned wolfishly. 'Oh yeah. I've got a plan.' He flicked the commlink on his collar. 'Hey - Freya? Yeah. I know. I suggested they bring you down to do your thing. But I need you to do me and Rei a solid…'

* * *

**Admiral class battleship "**_**Miranda**_"**. Two hours later.**

Blaze and Ali both stared down at the boys - not as easy as it had been a year ago, Ali thought sourly, since they'd both shot up in the past few months. Mamoru showed signs he was going to easily top his father's six-one eventually, and Rei was perilously close to his own six foot. The girl with them was a willowy five-ten, but her enigmatic, wide-eyed face was far harder to read than the barely concealed smug grins of the boys. But then, Nibelungs tended to do "expressionless" as standard.

'We're being played,' Ali muttered to Blaze out of the corner of his mouth. 'I know we're being sodding well played.'

'Fine. You call her bluff then,' Blaze replied evenly. At that, Freya looked up into his eyes, her own practically brimming with innocence. 'Don't,' he warned her, raising a hand. 'I can just about buy that without the _Arcadia_, you need help with the dark matter. I struggle to see how much use these two duplicitous jokers will be, but fine. I won't risk it. But so help me, if any of the three of your disobey an order, or do anything that puts themselves in danger, I will not hold back on making my displeasure known. Are we clear?'

'Yes sir.'

'Whatever.'

'Of course.'

Ali glared at Mamoru, Rei and Freya in turn and sighed. 'Bugger it, we're gonna catch seven hells from Harlock and Kei for bringing you two along.' He jabbed his finger at first Mamoru, then Freya. He glanced at Blaze. 'Your mum's gonna be pissed about -'

Blaze nodded glumly and glared at Rei, who stuck his hands in his pockets and smirked. 'Oh yeah. Thankfully we'll have a head start…' He gestured towards the bridge exit. 'Scoot. All of you. Get working on whatever it is you think you can help Freya with. We need that trace.'

'You'll have it.' Freya's voice was a light, pleasant contralto. She turned before she left the bridge, the boys ducking past her to get themselves out of sight before Blaze or Ali changed their minds. 'It's actually a very good idea of Mamoru's,' she added once he was out of earshot. Her tiny mouth had more of a tendency to smile than Mimay's did. Then again, dressed as she was in boots, leggings and a cropped tanktop, her silvery hair cut short above her narrow shoulders, she didn't exactly follow the older nibelung's example when it came to embracing her culture. 'Mamoru's connection to the _Arcadia's _dark matter and Rei's synthetic cells being linked to zero point energy via the motherball mean I can use both of them to make up for not having the _Arcadia's _dark matter engine to help. The _Miranda _has a much lower saturation, which makes it harder.' She laughed when they started to look more than a little dazed. 'I'll take the science talk elsewhere.'

After she'd left Blaze took the captain's seat with a sigh. Ali waited until he'd keyed his passcode into the controls set in the arm. 'Still seems kinda weird, doesn't it? That girl?'

'She likes modern fashions - what can I say?' Blaze smiled wistfully. 'You should see the others… centuries stuck in those machines and discovering a whole world they never knew existed. Not all are adapting as well as Freya, but they'll get there.'

'How many now?'

'Sixteen. It's a big planet though, but we're having better luck finding the outlying towns Mimay told us about with the Mazone helping. Most of the power plants in the cities… well. Freya was the only survivor in the city you found her in. After over a hundred years though, I doubt we'll find too many more.'

'Dumb luck Daiba tripped over her,' Ali replied grimly. 'Bloody hell. You'd think a species that ancient and advanced wouldn't be as fucked up as we are, but they just made the same mistakes first is all. Using people as parts for machines. Kids for fucks sake…'

'We don't have the monopoly on cruel and stupid,' Blaze told him. 'They didn't even see Freya's kind as their own children in a way. Bred for a purpose. And if you're thinking about the parallels with my dreaded aunt's society - well, remember who gave her a helping hand?'

'I'm not likely to forget,' Ali replied, his mouth twisted with distaste. 'Loki's still out there with his rebel angels. We've not seen hide nor hair of the _Phantasm _since the end of the war.'

Blaze frowned. 'I know. We thought it might have headed to Andromeda with the rest of the Empire fleet, but our spies haven't spotted it.'

'Don't mean it isn't there,' Ali pointed out amiably. 'Just means it ain't where your spies are…' He paused and tapped his top lip. 'Gotta wonder… Loki's rebel nibelung would know how to get round dark matter healing…'

Blaze shot him a startled look, his own frown deepening. 'The _Arcadia _didn't spot any dark matter traces that weren't the _Miranda _did it?'

Ali shook his head. 'Nah. But doesn't mean they couldn't be lurking inside new bodies, right? In a normal ship? Would explain them using a pre-war vessel - still some lying around if you know where to look. Easier to fake IDs for since they won't have an existing registry to erase…'

Blaze ran his fingers through his dark hair. 'Right now I really hope you're wrong. There's only one ship that can deal with that abomination, and we just sent her away.'

Ali slapped him on the shoulder. 'Well at least Tochiro and Mimay gave Hannibal's guys some hints on beefing up this old girl, right? New cannon, new shields, improved self-repair, total engine overhaul…' He grinned. 'And don't forget you've got the best of the _Arcadia's_ crew to help you…'

Blaze just _looked _at him. 'A pity they didn't expand the interior to make room for your ego whilst they were working on the ship,' he said dryly. Ali just smirked, and Blaze decided instead to ignore him and began giving orders to the bridge crew. They weren't leaving until they had some idea from either the time radar or Freya's strange senses on the direction, but at least it gave him the illusion of doing something whilst he waited. And a reason to ignore the looming, nervously pacing slab of muscle taking up space on his bridge, who he didn't have the heart to tell to leave.

The slab of muscle however was perfectly capable of distracting himself. 'What's that?' He pointed to a framed document placed on the wall of the bridge, behind the captain's chair. Blaze smiled. He didn't even need to look around to know what it was Ali referred to.

'Take a look. I know you can read.'

'Cheeky fuck.' But Ali strolled around the chair, hands in pockets, to peer at the document. 'Huh.' He grinned as he read the text, his smile growing when he recognised the copperplate hand used as his former captain's.

_**W**__hereas, by His Majesty's Commission under the Great Seal of Great Britain bearing Date the 25th Day of January in the year of Our Lord 2873 [….] the Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral are required and authorized to issue forth and grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal to any of His Majesty's Subjects or others, whom we shall deem fitly qualified in that Behalf for apprehending, seizing, and taking the Ships, Vessels and Goods [….] These are, therefore, to will and require you to cause a Letter of Marque and Reprisals to be issued out of the High Court of Admiralty unto __**Alexander Dietrich Sebastian Schenk von Stauffenberg**__, Commander of the Deathshadow Zero. Said Letters of Marque and Reprisal to continue in force until further orders, for which this shall be your Warrant._

_[-]_

'Letters of Marque? Cute.'

Blaze smiled without turning around. 'A gift from his brother he said, before the war. Apparently he thought his brother would be more of a privateer than a pirate.'

'What's the difference?'

'That document, so I hear,' Blaze replied promptly, earning a ripple of laughter from the crew.

Ali let his eyes wander around the unfamiliar bridge. Smaller than _Arcadia's_ monstrous gothic interior, yet if you looked closely, built along a very similar plan: the various workstations for weapons, shields and engineering were all arrayed along the viewscreen that took up most of the bow end, and although only about a foot high instead of twelve, the captain's position was on a raised platform, with two further consoles next to it on either side, larger than the front rank. Navigation to the left, comms to the right, both manned by young women in the Millennial Thieves' standard grey flightsuits. 'Kinda weird, isn't it?'

'Hmm?'

'This.' Ali waved a hand to indicate the bridge. 'You look at the _Arcadia's_ bridge and you realise it's based on this, but designed by someone with a real hard-on for mediaeval gothic. You get metal panels, we get flying buttresses.'

'We also keep the lights on,' one of the young women interjected. 'I've been on board the _Arcadia_ with the captain - kept having to watch my feet to avoid tripping over something. You're not too hot on health and safety either - I mean, have you _heard _of stowing wires away instead of using them as a trip hazard? Or for that matter, strangling unsuspecting passengers?'

Ali grinned at her. 'Sure. But we know where to put our feet and where to duck, and no-one boarding us does…'

'And rookies?' Blaze put in.

Ali shrugged. 'Weeds out the idiots, dunnit?' He looked around again and gave a mock shudder. There was something about the bright lights, the shiny desks and the wide open, quiet of the ship that made the spot between his shoulder blades itch. 'Never thought I'd miss the little guy's constant little noises…' he murmured to himself. He flicked imaginary dust off his glove with the other hand and gave the cuff of his sweater a tug. 'I'll go and check on the kids. Someone's gotta make sure they don't get into too much trouble…'

'I don't think they can do much damage until we get into a firefight,' Blaze called out as Ali strode off the bridge.

'Don't bet on it,' Ali called back over his shoulder. 'I'm still remembering the hole Mamoru and Taro managed to blow in the side of the _Arcadia_ messing around with some new power source last year…'

The young woman who'd spoken earlier turned in her seat. 'Captain? Should we be worried?'

Blaze smiled at her, opened his mouth to reassure her, thought about who she was asking about, and shut it again. 'I'm sure they won't throw anything at us we can't handle,' he settled on, fooling no-one, including himself. Mamoru without Taro was probably a safe bet, but Rei - his adopted brother - was an experimental synthetic with some weird-ass powers based on zero-point energy that no-one had quite fathomed, and Freya had spent two hundred years as the controller for a dark matter power source. 'Yeah. What could possibly go wrong?' he muttered, as he concentrated on the clipboard his XO was shoving under his nose.

'Want the list?' Farah asked him cheekily. A tall dark-haired man about Blaze's age, he had the perfectly sculpted beauty typical of Lar Metal's elite (former) ruling caste. 'The crew's already running a book on it…'

'Who had "all of the above"?' Blaze muttered darkly.

Farah smirked. 'We had to ban that bet or they'd all make it.'

Blaze handed back the clipboard with a roll of his eyes. 'Why does that _not _surprise me?' With little else to do until they had a course, he settled back in the chair and closed his eyes. _Harlock… Hannibal… Kei… wherever you are, be safe, my friends_. _And if you can't be safe, make the bastards hurt. _


	3. Chapter 2

Kei was right. I had been spoiled rotten: after several nights squashed into a bunk made for one not even her delightfully firm backside nestling against my nethers as we spooned was going to make up for the loss of our jumbo-sized four poster, and sharing the room with our great-something grandfather didn't help. Cats, kids, birds, aliens… I'd put up with the lot over the years, but having Hannibal in the room kept making me feel as though I had to be on my best behaviour. Not that hanky-panky was on either Kei's or my minds under the circumstances.

Privacy for rather more important conversations was an issue, however. If there were cameras and mics in the room, they were well hidden unless we went on a full-on seek-locate-destroy, which would pretty much negate the point of getting around them. So it was shared showers and ignore the smirks from the guards in the corridor, who presumably assumed the kindly old gentleman had particularly egalitarian tastes…

'You really think that this Captain Nero could be your old friend?' I asked. We had to take a chance on the room not being bugged too efficiently, and Hannibal waited politely with Kei in the changing area whilst I took a shower first. '_Deathshadow Two_ was crewless apart from her Nibelung, and _Three_ had a crew of what I can best describe - and never want to see again - as shambling, rotting zombies. I'd just assumed Harlock was the only one who managed to survive, and that only because he's too damn stubborn to die.'

He snorted at that last comment, but since he let it pass, I figured we were on the same page. 'I think it's more than possible. Khalsa was on the edge of the dark matter explosion - when Kodai opened fire on the _Deathshadow Four_ and Komarova followed his lead, Khalsa hung back. I've no idea what passed between him and Harlock - I arrived after the whole thing had gone tits up, and missed most of the crap that went down after Kodai's men boarded _Four_…'

'What kind of man was - is he?' Kei asked. She'd taken the first shower and was now sitting primly on the bench, brushing her hair with a brush provided by some smitten crewmember. Probably the same one who'd coughed up three sweaters almost as soft and clinging as her own and some brand new underwear still in the wrapper. For some reason the crew of the _Lightning _were falling over themselves to make _her _feel comfortable - at least, in any arena that didn't include a larger bed… O'Malley in particular was probably hoping she'd move in with him if they didn't give us a bigger bed. I was looking forward to the conversation I'd have with the oversized red-haired puppy if he carried on flirting. For now I had to pay attention to Hannibal.

'Khalsa? He was one of a handful who'd known my brother and Tochiro since the Academy - they all graduated within a year or so of each other - Harlock, Tochiro, Kavanagh - who was killed in the early years of the Homecoming War - Khalsa, Kodai…' he paused, lost in thought for a moment. Eventually he continued: 'He wasn't command track to start with - like a lot of us he ended up in command of a ship simply because they ran out of officers towards the end. Harlock kept a few officers with him from ship to ship, simply because they worked well with him - which Phantom being Phantom tended to mean they were content to follow along for the fun and didn't trouble him too much over the details... Kav was more of a bruiser, Khal electronic warfare. My brother had a somewhat laid back command style, and tended to pick officers who'd thrive under it. You knew Harlock, you both have a feel for the kind of men and women he liked serving with - fiercely independent, tough, intelligent…'

'...right up until the point he pulled the rug out from under them when they questioned his orders?' Kei muttered darkly. Under a curtain of lukewarm water, I winced. She wasn't letting go of Harlock's betrayal anytime soon. 'How come he's still alive, if the other ships all turned on Harlock? I'd have thought The Captain -' She still capitalised it, and I tried not to take it personally '- would have hunted him down and ended him for that.'

'_Deathshadow One_ didn't fire on the _Arcadia_,' Hannibal replied softly. 'I'm not sure Komarova would have if Kodai hadn't lost his head because his fiancee was piloting one of those transports. Once the _Three_ and _Four_ engaged, it all pretty much went sideways. She'd have gone in to protect the young ass, because sure as hell Albrecht wouldn't have backed down once one of his own stabbed him in the back like that. Khal… I think he probably didn't want to fire on a friend - but he was a career military officer - firing on his own fleet wouldn't have sat well with him, so I'm not surprised he didn't exactly go rushing to Harlock's defence. However you spin it, my brother's actions were in total violation of both his orders and the rules of engagement. He fired on a civilian target, and it was his word against the government's as to what was going on down there.'

'Didn't his fellow captains trust him?'

He gave me a sharp look. 'You were never career military were you?'

I shook my head. My brother had pushed me out of my fast-track science degree and into the Academy not to make a career for myself in the family trade, but to have a willing patsy to enable his own ambitions. Consequently the military mindset had never been more than an awkward overlay at best, quickly shed once I'd decided to throw in my lot with Harlock, and later taking over as captain of the Arcadia. I'm good at what I do - which mostly involves flying by the seat of my pants. Taking orders and actually obeying them? Not so much...

'It's not about trust. You'd go into a fight to take one for a friend without hesitating, but your acquaintance with the Chain of Command was spotty at best even when you were in the Fleet - and don't give me that look, Harlock - I've seen your record - even if you hadn't had your brother's leash around your neck, that rigid fleet uniform collar would have chafed. And "screw the rules, I'll make my own decisions" was precisely the attitude that got my brother into so much trouble.' He took a deep breath. 'And it wasn't Harlock who gave the order. His own father-in-law was on board one of those planes. Justin Rosenbach begged him to fire on those transports, even knowing it meant his own death - I'll bet Isora didn't tell you that one?'

No, he hadn't, but then there was a lot he either hadn't known, or hadn't cared to know. 'Why?'

'Because there were men on those ships who had plans for Earth that would have excluded anyone but a small elite from ever living there - they planned a final "cleansing" that would have left the planet for a chosen few. They planned on rounding up anybody who didn't meet their criteria and the result would have been a pile of bodies almost worthy of Promethium. The Gaia Sanction was compromised from the moment it was born, except hardly anyone knew it. But it was split into two factions - and one of them took the view that if they couldn't have the planet, then no-one could.'

I thought back to the battle in Earth orbit, eighteen years ago. The _Arcadia_. The _Oceanos_. And a sacrifice play that had left a chunk taken out of the Moon that you could still see on a good day from the surface of the ravaged planet. 'The Jovian Blaster?'

'Give the man a gold star. Taking out the leadership of the Elite - you know this bunch by the way - Doppler's Purists have been around for a long time - wasn't enough. I broke the rules myself by taking my ship out to Jupiter to take the damn thing out, and almost got myself killed doing it, because I got caught with my pants down by that Neutron Star System. Disabled them both - permanently, I thought at the time, sorry about that… But that wasn't enough for Harlock…'

The rest I'd pieced together over the years: Harlock's plan to ensure weapons like those couldn't be used to target Earth by surrounding it with a dark matter shield - a plan that had gone utterly, catastrophically wrong. The four _Deathshadow _ships had been caught in a massive backblast from the chain reaction, and had been thought destroyed by it, only the _Arcadia_ escaping, albeit dramatically changed and twisted by the process.

That assumption had been proved totally wrong in the last few years, and each time, the results had been terrible: the _Deathshadow Two_ had been used to create a rip in space-time that still hovered over our heads. Nothing we'd found near the Gate of Yedar had given us any idea what its purpose was. _Deathshadow Three_ had brought with it a mutated plague that had wiped out whole systems along its path, and had cost me the lives of several people I cared about and loved before we'd taken it out. My best friend. Our daughter. Our baby son. It had almost cost me Mamoru and Kei, and nightmares about that time still haunted both of us.

The water was now cold, so I stepped out of the shower cubicle and into the air dryers, warming up slightly in the blasts of hot air. 'You saw the ships go down?'

He nodded, and handed me my pants. 'Close enough to see it happen, too far away to stop it. I begged Harlock not to do anything stupid. Khalsa tried to get through to him, begged him to stop, but he didn't listen. I put the engines into the red trying to reach him - but even then, I didn't believe… I didn't even _think _\- that it could go so badly wrong. I thought he'd kill _himself _trying, for fuck's sake…' He stood staring into the empty room, and a single tear trickled down his cheek, to vanish into his silvery beard as he lowered his head. 'I saw him fall. I saw them _all _fall, black fire leaping from ship to ship, tearing them apart.

'The Earth… Oh, God help me… It was like watching the planet turn itself inside out. The atmosphere was black and red, like the fires of hell itself. Mountains crumbled in the space of a heartbeat and the seas... The land heaved, buckled, thrown up into space and torn apart in an instant. And all I could do was watch…' He took a deep shuddering breath. 'Miranda… Katie… Ellie... my wife. My daughters. Tochiro's wife Annelise and their daughters. My home. My family. My friends… all gone, in less time that it takes to tell you.'

I laid a hand on his shoulder. Truthfully, there wasn't much else I could do. Even after over a hundred years this was a wound that still bled. I wondered how the hell he bore it, day in, day out, without succumbing to the same nihilistic apathy as his brother. But I figured I had most of my answer in what he'd become over the years. Instead of sinking into the terrible, self-loathing depression of his brother, he'd gone out and made a difference. He was a man who liked to stay busy. He moved out from under my brief gesture with an apologetic smile.

'You shouldn't let me ramble,' he said, as he stripped off and moved into the shower cubicle. 'An old man's regrets and a lifetime of guilt…'

'I think you're too hard on yourself,' I told him, my voice muffled slightly by my shirt as I pulled it on over my head. Our hosts had at least seen fit to provide the pair of us with _some _clean clothing, thankfully, as after a couple of days ours was getting a little ripe. I never could be bothered with buttons so I tended to just undo enough to pull the damn thing on and off. 'But it helps - to understand. A little of what you endured. Maybe even to understand this Captain Nero, if he is Khalsa. From what you say, it's possible he survived the dark matter reaction, like Harlock.' I paused to pick up my patch and tie it over my eye. 'Okay, maybe hopefully not _totally _like Harlock… I'd rather not have _two _of them to deal with…'

Hannibal's mouth twitched slightly at the corners. 'Khal was a warrior through and through - and much less inclined to wallowing in his own misery than my brother,' Hannibal replied over the splashing drizzle of the shower unit. 'Like Harlock though, he had his blind spots, and he could be a little rigid. A _good _man is not always an _easy _man to live with…' he switched off the water and stepped out. 'Was it necessary to use up _all _the hot water, you two?'

I ignored him, and returned the favour from earlier by handing him his pants when he stepped out of the dryer. 'Hard, stubborn, principled… You do know we're screwed, right?'

He pulled up his pants and took the black shirt Kei offered. 'Maybe. They want something from us though. Anyone who feels he has to kidnap me and hold me prisoner to get my attention feels they've got a good reason to keep me under control whilst they lay out why they want me. Same goes for you - unless he doesn't know about the regime change…'

I laughed harshly. 'Oh, they know. This Yanez puts on a good show, but he's playing us. Make the infamous space pirate think he's a nobody? Please. I went through Andromeda like, as Ali would say, prunes through a short granny a few years back, and Promethium's had my wanted poster plastered over every available billboard and street light in the galaxy. The only people who didn't know I was passing through were already dead.'

'And strangely enough, I don't remember hearing about this "Nero" when we were over there,' Kei said, her normally smooth forehead bearing a tiny crinkle as she frowned. 'Terror of Andromeda my arse…'

'Games,' I added sagely. 'This Yanez is almost as playful with his prey as I am. I seriously love the way he's got his crew to play along - they're enjoying the Dastardly Pirate roles, but it's not who they are.'

'Like your crew,' Hannibal replied dryly.

Kei shook her head and answered for me. 'Our guys enjoy playing silly buggers and knocking the unwary on their arses by playing at being screw-ups, then showing their hard bastard credentials. This lot are playing pirate, but they're smooth underneath it. Guard changes are like clockwork, and the slouches evaporate whenever an officer walks past - in fact, that's how we've identified some of the command crew, for all they dress down and try to act as though they're all in it together. When we're not around, this is one very slick, well trained crew.'

'So's ours,' I felt the need to add, feeling I had to stand up for them.

She just rolled her eyes. 'They're a bunch of individualistic fuckups you happen to be very good at going in the same direction most of the time,' she pointed out. Hannibal gave me a sympathetic shrug.

'Some help you are,' I told him. 'Whose side are you on?'

'It's a compliment,' Kei added, giving me a pat on the arm. She sighed a little wistfully, and I knew damned well why - the little minx loved nothing better than order and efficiency, something the _Arcadia _tended to be a little… lacking… in from time to time. Just to make it clear I glared at Hannibal. 'You can't have her,' I told him. 'No matter how much she begs to swap commanders.' He just smirked and sat down to pull his boots on.

Kei laughed and gave me a peck on the cheek. 'But I'd be _bored _on the _Miranda_,' she told me. 'They're so polite and efficient…'

'Bossy.' I told her. 'You're still _bossy_.'

'Still have a ship full of people with serious social issues and problems with authority,' she replied. She was about to say more, then cocked her head on one side. Hannibal and I both felt the same change and we all reached for our flight jackets. I picked up Hannibal's by mistake, and we exchanged with sheepish grins. Kei zipped hers up with a determined flourish. 'We've stopped.'

'Not quite - coming in for a landing,' I added, feeling the minute gravity changes as the ship dived through the atmosphere. I turned to Hannibal. 'You can pay me when we get home,' I told him.

'Pay you?' Kei turned a puzzled frown on me as we walked back to our quarters.

'I bet him this lot had a planetary base, not a space one.' I grinned at the red-haired guard as we walked past. 'Hi, O'Malley. Looks like you'll be able to top your tan up!' He ignored me - or at least tried to. I'd almost succeeded in getting this guy to crack, and a couple of times the corners of his mouth had twitched when I baited him. Like now. I felt the ship rock slightly as she touched down, and grinned still further. 'Two for two? Damn, I'm good…'

'Smartarse,' was all Hannibal said as he walked past me and into our room. Kei tugged my sleeve. 'Two?'

'We just touched down on water,' I told her. 'Seriously? Did neither of you spot the tan lines and the calluses from hauling ropes some of these guys have? Or the way they walk? Half of them spend a lot of time on the water...' I walked into our quarters, hands in my pockets, and feeling rather pleased with myself. Now assuming I was reading things around here correctly, our host should be along shortly to escort us personally to meet his "captain"...

...and I was three for three when I saw our host, Yanez, standing in the middle of the room, waiting for us with a smug grin on his weathered face.


	4. Chapter 3

_**Miranda**_

Although only about a quarter of the _Arcadia's _length, the _Miranda _currently carried twice as many crew. Mamoru, a keen student of the history of his family's love affair with all things nautical - astro- and terrestrial - couldn't put it all down to the amount of automation the _Arcadia _enjoyed, with her creator's spirit animating its central computer. The same man, after all, had designed the computers that controlled the smaller vessel as a prototype for the massive, cathedral-like structure at the heart of his father's ship.

'It's mostly down to the engines.' Rei had a tendency to just cut right through his musings and take all the fun out of the research. Mamoru sat back in his chair and glared at the older boy. A waste of effort since it was mostly water off a duck's back, even when he added a credible imitation of his father's scowl.

'I was getting there…' He cursed inwardly as his voice cracked, wobbling from a pleasant tenor back into a boyish treble. And he didn't miss Rei's smirk at the slip. 'Asshole.'

'One of the perks of not going through puberty,' Rei replied smugly. 'And to answer your question…'

'Please, continue. I _hate_ to find things out for myself.'

Rei waved a hand at him dismissively and ignored the finger flipped in his direction. 'The _Arcadia's _entire bow is taken up with sensors and the dark matter engine. Her standard reactors and weapons also take up proportionately more space, since she's got so many damned gun placements. Ergo, less space for a crew - although she's designed to run with about double the number your dad usually takes along. Not sure why he goes with between forty to fifty as standard.'

'Well fuck me… something you _don't _know?' Mamoru drawled. It was his turn to smirk and ignore an extended digit from where its owner lay, legs crossed at the ankles and other arm behind his head, on one of the four bunks in the room.

'Rations,' Freya interjected, from her chair at her workstation, where she'd been busy analysing data from the ship's sensors. 'The _Arcadia's _got practically infinite energy in our universe, but you still need water and food for the crew over sustained periods in space. Actually it's mostly the water supply - during the Machine Wars he did run with around seventy-five crew simply to allow everyone to stay reasonably sharp under constant battle conditions, but they were rarely in deep space for long periods of time, as the main engagements were in-system.' She looked around and flicked her light, fine hair out of her eyes with an artful, flirtatious gesture. 'What? I do my homework as well, you know.'

'Oh,' Rei drawled. 'We know… teacher's pet.'

Mamoru snorted. 'Seriously? Mr I've-got-an-organic-computer-for-a-brain is taking issue with the other person in the room who doesn't have to work his or her tushie off for class credit?'

'Bite me.'

'No thanks, I've not had my shots.'

Freya sighed. 'If the two of you are going to act like a couple of jerks, can you do it somewhere else? I'd like some peace and quiet whilst I do this. You know - work off some of that excess testosterone by beating the crap out of each other somewhere that isn't here?'

'I don't _have _hormones,' Rei pointed out in his most reasonable tone, which tended to come out somewhere equally placed between insolence and sarcasm.

'I'm not putting the words "beat" and "Rei" in the same sentence,' Mamoru replied, erring on the side of insolence. 'But I have to say the knowledge that you make a conscious _effort _to be a dick - as well as make use of your perfectly sculpted parts - doesn't really come as a surprise.'

Freya sighed heavily, put down her tablet, turned her chair so that she was facing them, and pointed to the door. 'I tried asking nicely. Fuck off. Both of you. Now.'

The youths whistled admiringly in unison. 'Such a mouth on the sweet little nibelung!' Mamoru laughed and ducked the stylus she threw at his head, caught it with his left hand and threw it back so that it landed point upwards in the empty cup next to Freya. 'Yesss!' He high-fived the empty air.

'Fluke,' Rei coughed into his hand.

'Out!' This time she snapped the word out, stamping her foot for emphasis as she jabbed her finger in the direction of the door. With as much insouciance as they could muster, the boys both stood up, getting in each other's way as they both tried to get through the door together, occasioning some good-natured - or at least not bad-natured - pushing and shoving to get out.

The door hissed closed behind them over Freya's sighed "finally". Once in the corridor they simultaneously adopted the same casual pose - leaning against the walls facing each other, hands in pockets.

'I suppose there's always the Mess,' Rei said eventually.

'For someone who derives most of his fizz from zero point energy, you eat like it's going out of fashion.'

Rei shrugged. 'My organics need it. And I'm a growing boy.'

Mamoru snorted. 'Growing outward at this rate.' He reached out and and jabbed Rei in the gut lightly, laughing off the mock growl. 'Maybe we do need to work off a bit of steam. It's been three days. And there's not much to do around here.'

'You decided to come along,' Rei pointed out. His black hair fell over his right eye and he pushed it out of the way. 'But I hear you. I don't like feeling like a fifth wheel either. The elders always seem to think we need protecting. Which in my case is bollocks…'

'Not until you finish growing and we get that motherball to stabilise your power outputs it isn't.' They both turned to see Blaze walking towards them. 'And stop experimenting when you think no-one's looking.'

'I wasn't…'

Mamoru tucked his chin in slightly to hide a smile. It wouldn't be obvious to most people - his father and Kei would probably spot it; Blaze, lacking their exposure to dark matter probably not, but although he'd stuffed his hands in his pockets, the tell-tale wisps of blue fire still trailed around his wrists before vanishing like mist.

'Yeah. Right.' Blaze aimed a slap at his brother's head calculated to just waft the hair on top of it slightly. Rei didn't even bother to duck and just grinned at his older brother. 'I _know _you, kiddo. Don't even think of trying it on my watch. On which note - why are you pair loitering in my corridor? The whole point of you inviting yourselves along was so you could make yourselves useful to Freya…'

'She asked us to leave,' Rei replied brightly.

Blaze snorted. 'Really? Or more likely the two of you were bugging the hell out of her and she sent you packing?'

The boys exchanged slightly guilty looks. Blaze laughed. 'I had a brother close to my age as well, remember? And I'm not so old I can't remember the shit we pulled at your age. If Freya's fed up with you, you can get down to the mess and give Anita a hand.'

'What's she doing on board?' Mamoru frowned. 'I thought we were just taking Ali?'

'If I'm going to have to run half way across known space to rescue Harlock, I'm bloody well making sure I can eat well while I do it,' Blaze replied with a grin.

Rei sniggered. 'You might want to rethink that, if you're hell-bent on shagging the arse off Hannibal's great-grandaughter… both for her sake and yours, if you want to fit in those pants for much longer, and be able to defend yourself against the Old Man when he catches you with 'em round your ankles…'

Blaze glared at him. 'What makes you think…'

'Please,' Mamoru added in his lazy drawl. 'We do know whose quarters are down that corridor, you dirty old man - Emilia's almost half your age!'

A slow blush spread over Blaze's face. 'None of your bloody business. And I'm Lar Metallian, in case you've forgotten? Double the usual lifespan?'

'Yet still,' Rei drawled in his turn, mimicking Mamoru's tone, 'Forty and change…'

'She's twenty-four, you judgemental little arses. And whilst we're on the subject…' he jabbed a finger at Mamoru's midsection.

'What? Last time I looked _I_ wasn't shagging anyone I shouldn't...'

'I love the way you qualify that,' Rei said out of the corner of his mouth.

'Not you. Your bloody twin… has his tongue down my baby sister's throat at every opportunity.'

Mamoru sniggered. 'You do know she's not exactly an unwilling - or passive - participant, right? In fact the last time I walked in on them, Kanna was on…'

'Mamoru!' Blaze glared at him. 'Do not - if you value Wataru's life - finish that sentence in my hearing.'

'His intentions are honourable,' Mamoru pointed out. Under Blaze's baleful glare he temporised 'Eventually…'

'Baby. Sister.' Blaze glanced at Rei looking for backup, but the younger boy just shrugged.

'They're old enough for a bit of snogging, Blaze. You should realise Mamo here is just yanking your chain, and Wataru's so hell-fire bent on Doing the Right Thing he's probably got her Significant Birthday in his diary to ping him at one minute past midnight…'

'Kind of not helping,' Mamoru said, doing the sideways thing himself to make a point. He grinned. 'Though at least I'm never going to take the blame for his antics any more…' he ran a finger over his eyepatch, only slightly self-consciously. And as expected, the guilty looks on the faces of the brothers told him he'd neatly deflected the argument. Again. _You owe me, bro_… he thought. Rei still blamed himself for not being able to use his powers to zap the mazone who'd kidnapped him six years ago, and Blaze could always be reliably guilt-tripped. However briefly, he reflected, as Blaze's eyes narrowed. 'Mess hall. Anita. Right.' He grabbed Rei's arm and dragged him past Blaze, giving the older man a sickly grin that if he'd known it, was an exact replica of his father's as a young man.

Blaze sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair before knocking on the door. It opened silently, and he stepped through. 'Freya?'

The nibelung girl turned to look at him, and smiled, her tiny mouth turning up at the corners, and her wide, round eyes blinked as her nictitating membrane flickered across. He still found it somewhat awkward to talk to her - after Mimay's stoic, reserved silences, Freya's cheekier demeanour was a little bewildering. He wasn't altogether sure the nibelung as a race had the concept of "teenager", but the little girl rescued from a stasis capsule that had trapped her as the controller of a dark matter generator for over two hundred years had grown into a graceful, pretty young woman of her race - no longer a child, but demonstrably still lacking Mimay's physical maturity.

'Blaze!' Although tiny, her mouth could and did curve into a genuine smile, and her round, vertically slitted eyes held a warmth in their strangeness often missing from Mimay's impenetrable gaze. 'I was just about to call you.'

'Do you have their trail?'

'I have something,' she replied, turning back to her console, where she tapped a command into the computer and brought a hologrammatic display up in front of them, hovering over the surface of her workstation. Her long, oddly jointed fingers danced over the controls. 'Thankfully this ship has a few additions to her sensors most don't. I spoke to Mimay - she says Tochiro and her fellow Nibelung tested out a few bits of tech before they designed the Deathshadow Fleet. I was able to link it to the time radar, set for Harlock's - and Hannibal's - unique dark energy traces. Tracking just two people against the background levels isn't easy, but there is a trail, and I did find it. Following it isn't going to be easy in the _Miranda_, except…'

'Except?'

She beamed at him again. 'Look. The trail leads out into the galactic void, see?'

He looked, but could only see the cosmic static that reminded him of a stereoscopic picture. Even when her finger traced the faint line through space time that to her was as clear as daylight, he could only take her word for the fact that there was indeed a pattern in the chaos. But gradually, as he stared, sure enough he could slowly start to see the tiny trail. Or maybe it was the power of suggestion…

'Which one am I looking at?' he asked. The faint line - more of a series of dashes, actually, which he assumed meant serial IN-SKIP jumps - ran parallel to a second, much fainter trail in a different colour. Harlock's blue, faintly shot through with red, matched courses with another; a dark purple. 'Is this real-time or a colour-correction?'

'Real time,' she assured him. 'That's the ship that took them coming here. Before you ask, no, it isn't a dark matter ship, but it spends a lot of time in close proximity to a working engine. A powerful one at that.' Her fingers again waltzed over the control, to show a blue glow in the background microwave radiation, close by. 'This is _Arcadia_…' more fingertip choreography. '...and this, all the way over here, in the interstellar void, is the other.'

Not even Blaze's human senses could mistake the red glow the two trails converged on in Freya's projection. 'There's a planet there?'

Freya nodded, the gesture causing her short, fine fair to float around her head momentarily, as though in freefall. 'A small earth-type planet, mostly water. Circling a main sequence star. It's so far from anything it's not listed as inhabited, although it's perfectly suitable if you don't mind getting your feet wet. No name listed, and it's actually closer to Andromeda than the Milky Way.' She stopped, and stared up into his eyes, her normally impassive features almost displaying a tiny frown. Blaze took a closer look at the display, then reached over her shoulder to tap the controls to magnify the image.

Thick lines of a sickly, festering green converged on the red from a direction above the ecliptic plane of M31. Where the trails for the _Arcadia_ \- already moving in the opposite direction - and the mysterious ship carrying Harlock, Kei and Hannibal - ran like rivers through space-time, these were like thick threads of infection, leaving dark voids along their path.

'Phantasma class ships,' Freya said softly, her eyes sad. 'They tear their way through the universe, leaving devastation in their wake. Silence in the song of creation.'

Blaze stared at the 3d display, and bit his bottom lip. 'I thought there was only one of those things?'

'Whatever gave you that idea?' When he looked at her in confusion she patted his hand gently. 'Loki has one, yes. But these weren't nibelung warships. Phantasma were relics of the old universe. They weren't ours, we just inherited them…' She frowned, her tiny mouth pursed in a moue of disapproval. Her hand reached out to trace those sickly lines. 'They belong to the Lords of Shadow, and if they are heading to the same planet as Harlock…'

The name meant nothing to him, but her reaction was enough. 'Give navigation the vector and keep us on track. We're moving,' he told her grimly. He didn't wait for her agreement, but made straight for the door and was running by the time it shut behind him.


	5. Chapter 4

The first thing I noticed about the planet we'd landed on was the heat. It hit us as we walked down the ramp of the _Lightning's_ rear hanger like walking into a brick wall. Within seconds Hannibal and I had divested ourselves of our jackets, and these were taken from us by a grinning O'Malley. By the time we hit the bottom of the ramp, I'd unbuttoned my shirt down to my navel and my sleeves were as far over my elbows as I could roll them. Hannibal wasn't far behind me doing the same.

Kei - smirking with the insouciant smugness of someone who'd asked about the planetary conditions beforehand - sauntered casually at my side wearing loose white pants and a flowing silk shirt in a vivid red. In front of us Captain Yanez strolled into the haze wearing just a pair of shorts and sandals.

'I'm one sweaty trickle away from just stripping off to my underwear and to hell with first impressions,' I muttered to Hannibal.

He grimaced and ran a finger around his collar. 'I might just be right behind you.'

One of our captors sniggered, and I shot the offender a filthy look. I must have still had my "bad pirate" vibe working for me at least, because he gulped and slowed his pace to drop behind us a few extra paces. Hannibal tsked at me. 'Sometimes, I do see my brother in you…'

'Now there's an image…' someone muttered from behind, and this time the glare I gave the miscreant caused him to take a sudden step to the side, which took him over the edge of the ramp - thankfully - or not - by this time we were only a foot or two above ground level, but he still let out a pained grunt as he landed. I stuck my hands in my pockets and strolled past the idiot as I followed in Yanez's footsteps, ignoring the whimpering heap clutching his ankle. It didn't escape me that Yanez pointedly ignored the injured party as well.

Kei scampered slightly to catch up to us; both Hannibal and myself had a tendency to stride out, and she had to stretch a little to keep up with our longer legs. Casually, I slowed my pace to match hers. 'Where do you think we're going?' she asked in a quiet voice.

I nodded towards the back of Yanez' greying head. 'Wherever _he _is.' The smart-alec comment earned me a frown. 'The beach, by the look of it.' I eyed up the vast expanse of water lapping at the sandy shore with a little discomfort. I'm Martian born and bred - meaning I'm an adequate swimmer at best, and large bodies of water are both a conscious waste of scarce resources, and something tolerated rather than enjoyed for recreation. Kei, ship-born, had held a similar dislike of the waste, but over the years had developed a taste for swimming. Me - I'd happily high-dive into it because it's a rush, but swimming in open water just for the hell of it isn't something I've ever done for fun - which didn't, as we got closer and the vague shapes seen through the heat haze resolved into a group of people frolicking in the waves, seem to bother the locals. Well over two dozen of them were either splashing around close to shore, or swimming in the bay laid out before us.

We have a holographic chamber in Deathshadow Island - our floating home away from home - based around a landscaped former wet-dock facility inside the former Gaia Fleet space port. I went with a tropical bay with golden sand, a couple of large cliffs, deep clear water and perpetually cloud free skies because I never mess with a classic. This place was the real deal, complete with what looked like a replica pre-atomic age tall ship anchored in the bay, sails furled.

Closer to hand several men and women were either lounging or in defiance of the heat, playing a vigorous game of contact volleyball with encouragement from the loungers. Clothing appeared to be optional, and given the temperature, I didn't blame them in the slightest. Even after a mere few hundred yards, I was seriously regretting keeping the leather pants on. 'How the hell did you manage to get someone to part with those?' I asked Kei as we walked towards the water's edge. She simply added enigmatic to smug and strolled on.

'Which one's the captain, do you think?' she asked. She was busy braiding her long hair as she walked, to keep it off her neck. I studied the figures I could see from our position - by now we were a few feet from the water, walking along the wet sand towards what looked like a wooden beach bar doing double duty as a corral for feral surfboards. I glanced at Hannibal for help, but the old bastard wasn't giving anything away, if he'd spotted anyone he knew.

Perhaps there wasn't anyone… But I checked out the crowd anyway. Force of habit - you could always identify the troublemakers or potential danger points if you watched. There's a pattern to the way people react to the alpha predators in their midst, but it wasn't in play here - most of the action was spontaneous, frivolous and happy - these guys reminded me of my own people when we let it all hang out on Deathshadow Island; relaxed and cheerful.

Except… there was an odd pattern. Yanez had come to a stop just before the high water line, and seemed to be waiting for something - or someone. Whilst I tried to resist tapping my foot impatiently, I began to notice that the crowd moved in an odd way, not totally at random.

'See it?' Kei asked me, leaning in so close her lips brushed my ear.

'Um. Not once is anyone down here out of sight of anyone else - in fact, I think every single person has at least two eyes on them. It's like they're constantly shifting their locations to keep that in mind.' Children ran and played with happy abandon, but always with watchful eyes, within an unseen boundary.

'No-one leaves the beach alone, at least so far,' Hannibal added in my other ear. 'Curious…'

Testing a theory, I walked a few steps to my left, deliberately moving out of the line of sight of a tall young man with dark, almost ebony black skin complemented by blazing red trunks. It was like a game of chess, I thought, watching a middle-aged woman send a frisbee flying off at a tangent which just happened to move her into line of sight with me when she followed it.

So… what the hell made them so watchful? I caught Kei's eye as I sauntered back to her side, and she raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Her cobalt blue eyes were sharp; she missed very little. She'd caught the silent accord between our hosts as well.

Yanez called out something I couldn't make out, and one of the swimmers started striking out for the shore. As soon as he - and the build was definitely male - began to walk out of the ocean, those nearest almost imperceptibly stood to attention, however briefly, as he walked past them. 'That one,' I said quietly to Kei. On my good side, I saw Hannibal momentarily stiffen, then relax.

Stark bollock naked, he walked out - no - _strode _out of the sea like Poseidon wading ashore from his kingdom. Tall - impressively so: Yanez was handing him a sarong, and I judged the newcomer to be at least a couple of inches taller than me by comparison to his subordinate. Jet black hair, curling down to about the middle of his shoulder blades even when wet. Dark skinned, not tanned. A short, well trimmed black beard framed a mouth that had a natural, sardonic curl to it, and a full bottom lip that gave him a slightly cruel look when he didn't smile. I'd have guessed his age around ten years older than I look - mid forties at most, close to my real age. Body type lean, and though a little soft around the middle, his chest and shoulders were both broad and well muscled; I'd hate to go against him in a fistfight or sabre to sabre - that torso spoke of great upper body strength. His height was mostly in his legs; before he wrapped the sarong around his middle and tucked it up to form impromptu trews, I noticed they were long and lean, and I judged _fast _was also on the table. No; I really wouldn't want to take this guy on. He held himself with the ease and grace of someone who knows how to handle himself in a fight. His reach was longer than mine as well - the corded arms were long, the hands large. He was also rather hirsute.

Next to me, Kei cleared her throat, and I spared her a quick glance, having to turn my head to do so, since she always covered my blind side. 'Wipe the drool,' I told her. 'And please stop licking him from head to toe with your eyes…'

'I can't help it,' she whispered back. But she reached out and took my hand, giving it a quick squeeze as though to reassure me. I'm not _that _insecure - I know my Kei too well after almost two decades, but what walked towards us taking one stride for every two or so of Yanez' was a walking invitation for sex, or I was no judge of the reaction women have to tall, dark and dangerously handsome.

He reminded me slightly of Harlock - something in the bearing, perhaps. The dark eyes and the quick appraisal that raked me from head to toe and - whilst not dismissing me - leaving me feeling as though I had to stand up straighter and let him have the full Captain Harlock treatment right between the eyes. But where Harlock had been aloof, reserved and radiated a sense of apathy and despair, this man walked as though he owned the very air he breathed. Harlock had been resigned to his fate. This man… this man, I realised, had faced it, and owned it. There was pride in every line of the man, but also a deep sorrow in his dark eyes.

He stood in front of me, and bowed gracefully from the waist. But not to me.

'_Alex Schenk_?' he said to Hannibal, his deep voice sounding more than a little amused. There was a light in those eyes - not as dark close up as I'd first thought - the colour was closer to my own hazel, though maybe with more green in them; kohl-edged lashes made them appear darker - and his mouth quirked slightly at the corners. 'Mamoru my friend - you're not even _trying…' _Then without warning he threw his head back and laughed, before grabbing my great-something grandfather in a bear hug, which after a very brief hesitation, was as far as I could see, warmly returned. 'How long has it been? A hundred years? More? I thought you dead, Mamoru,' he said when he'd released Hannibal. He slapped him on the back. 'If not in the battle, then taken by time. Fate it seems had plans for both of us.' He turned next to Kei, and his bow was even deeper. He offered his hand but when she, after a slight hesitation, offered her own, he didn't shake it but turned it over, lost in his large dark hand, liberally scattered with wiry dark hairs, and kissed it. 'Grafin. Welcome to Ventimiglia.'

'Grafin?' Kei's puzzled look swept over both myself and Hannibal. I shrugged. Hannibal smiled.

'Technically I suppose since you're married to Harlock's heir, the title would normally apply. It means "countess". Though the family claims to such things were always a little tenuous.' Hannibal lips twitched slightly, as though at a personal joke. '_He _hated the title.'

'And the responsibility?' It came out a little more waspishly than I'd intended, but having to stand there and be deliberately ignored was really starting to annoy me.

Nero - if that was the name he preferred - let go of Kei's hand, and turned to Hannibal. 'The cub has teeth…' he murmured appreciatively. Patronising arse. I wondered how much force I'd have to put into a punch to shatter that all too handsome aquiline profile.

'Don't drag me into this one, Khal,' Hannibal told him flatly. 'You want to bait him, you're on your own.'

"Nero" grinned at him, revealing an impressive row of pearly white teeth. He turned and I now had his undivided attention, as he bowed with a flourish. 'You were well named,' he said as he straightened, looking me straight in the eye. 'Yama, the one who judges… and, it would seem, finds us wanting.'

I decided to be the better man and offered my hand. 'Most people call me Harlock, these days. I left _that _name behind a long time ago.'

He took my hand - positively dainty by comparison - and shook it firmly, but not too hard. Not a bonecrusher, this one. He knew better ways to intimidate than the obvious. Flickers of blue lightning sparked between us where skin touched skin. 'Ah. But has _it _left _you_? Khalsa, captain, Earth Alliance, once. Most people call me Nero, these days. I suppose Mamoru here explained my - it seems - not-so-unique circumstances?'

'You were the captain of _Deathshadow One_,' I replied, extricating my hand from a grip that held it, testing, a moment longer than necessary. I looked around. The _Lightning _sat on the rocky headland behind us, her lines blurred in the haze. 'I have to ask: where…?'

'My ship? The _Thunderbolt _survived. She's kept elsewhere, out of sight of prying metal eyes.' He slapped one of those massive hairy paws on my shoulder and if not for years of trying to look tough and brace myself against my damned bird using me as a perch, I'd have buckled. 'I must apologise for taking such a roundabout way of getting your attention, and for our rudeness. But believe me, there is method behind my rudeness. Perhaps you, your lovely wife, and my former admiral here will join me for dinner?'

'If there's an explanation for why you felt the need to drag me halfway across to Andromeda instead of just asking me, for dessert, then I might consider it,' I replied, giving him my best sarcastic drawl. He laughed again.

'I never thought that smart mouth would be genetic.'

'Neither did I,' I replied dryly. 'Then we had twin boys and realised why I piss off so many people…' This last might have been a bit unfair to Wataru, who just has a habit of speaking - and acting - before he thinks. Mamoru on the other hand has a sense of humour that tends to result in him coming off as a smart-mouthed little prick when he feels like it, and he can be a manipulative little shit to boot. It's a good job we love them to distraction: it's all that keeps me from throttling the little bastard some days.

Some of this must have shown on my face - or Kei's, as Nero raised an eyebrow and looked at Hannibal. 'That bad?'

'Worse,' Hannibal replied, trying to keep from laughing. 'Especially the eldest. Remember how my brother could be when he turned on the charm?'

'Hell yes,' Nero replied with some feeling. 'Kav and I were always picking up the pieces. Those messes we weren't making for ourselves that is.'

'They named him after _me…'_ Hannibal's plaintive, unspoken plea for sympathy earned yet more laughter, and a slap on the back that almost floored him.

'Could have been worse,' Nero replied. 'Could have been daughters…' A shadow passed over Hannibal's face, and Nero lowered his head. 'Oh my friend… I'm sorry… Did anyone get out? Before…?'

'I lost Miranda, Elena and Katy,' Hannibal replied softly. 'I couldn't persuade Miri to leave before travel shut down. Aurora was on Mars, but it was safer not to draw attention to her, and later… she decided to stay. Jan was badly injured, couldn't be moved for months.'

I laid a hand on his shoulder, understanding all too well what still haunted him, over a century later. We'd lost our eldest daughter, Yumi, ten years ago, during the _Deathshadow Three's _reign of terror. No parent should ever bury a child. We'd buried two; Hannibal had lost most of his first family in his brother's disastrous attempt to shield Earth. In later years… Well. Living as long as he had, I couldn't even begin to imagine how it would feel to see your family age and die around you, whilst you lived on, aging slowly.

That it might be my fate wasn't something I'd seriously considered, until I stood staring at two men who'd outlived everything and everyone they'd ever known. One of them still in the prime of life, at least outwardly. Hannibal though… He could pass for a man in his late fifties or early sixties, but there was a frailty about him some days that worried me, and had since I'd known him. I wasn't at all happy that he'd been taken so far from his ship. Those of us affected by dark matter needed to stay in close proximity to our vessels or the dark matter in our systems was slowly but eventually metabolised. It wouldn't kill those of us in good health - the smart money was that we'd simply age normally from that point on if we never went near a dark matter engine again. But Hannibal had been double the age I'd been when I took a massive dose, when _he'd _been caught in a backblast. Over a hundred years had passed since then, and _Deathshadow Zero_ hadn't been part of Tochiro's Nibelung inspired fleet. She'd been an ordinary ship with a few prototypical enhancements. Those hundred years had taken a toll. Kei and I had just turned forty-two; we can both pass for our mid twenties.

Perhaps Nero spotted it as well, because he smiled at us - not a reassuring gesture, frankly. He showed far too many white, perfect teeth. But he placed an arm around Hannibal's shoulders and gestured towards a long, low wooden building further up the beach, well above the high water line. 'Gentlemen, my lady - I am forgetting my manners. Please accept the hospitality of my home. A shower, a change of clothes, a short rest and then dinner.'

'And for dessert?' I added dryly.

He gave me a slight nod. 'If it's answers you prefer over fruit, Harlock -' and like every other relic from old times who'd known the previous holder, he hesitated over the name - 'then I promise you, answers you shall have.'

Well. That was a given, even if I had to drag them out of him. For now I just smiled and nodded my acceptance. If he was going to be fooled by my looks, I wasn't going to disabuse him anytime soon. I'd been played by one cursed captain of those cursed ships. There wasn't going to be a second.

* * *

Dinner was an interesting experience, held on the beach at one of several long wooden tables in a long, open "hall", lit by tall torches once the sun sank below the horizon. I'd expected some formality, the captain aloof from his people, but Nero's attitude was closer to mine than to my predecessors. Observing him from my vantage point on the largest table, I watched him move among them, greeting them familiarly and cheerfully - even picking up the children who wandered around, dispensing cuddles and kisses and on the receiving end of sticky hugs. The contrast between his easy-going attitude and Harlock's anti-social isolation was striking.

And it told me nothing about why I was here.

Kei topped up my glass from the jug in front of us, a local brew made from some fruit, that packed a hefty punch. Hannibal waved off after his second glass, Kei wasn't much of a drinker and only sipped at hers, but it tasted divine, and I got outside of most of the jug before I even felt a buzz. Whether my dark-matter riddled body's ability to metabolise alcohol and other drugs without ill effects was a blessing or a curse rather depended on which side of the sick bay door I was standing at the time. Judging from the amount Nero was quaffing with no ill effects, I suspected this was a perk of the job.

For all the easy-going atmosphere, there were guards at every entrance to the beach-front hall we were sitting in, however discretely they were slouching against doorways and next to windows. Ali, lurker extraordinaire, would have been right at home. And, I suspected, for very similar reasons.

'What the hell are they so afraid of?' I whispered to Kei as she topped up my glass again. I had to push the wide sleeves of the white silk shirt I was wearing out of the way to avoid them trailing in some spillage on the wooden table. The sky blue pants were made of the same soft fabric which went a great way towards mitigating the heat, still in the low thirties although the sun was going down. They'd put her in matching blue, Hannibal in black, to his amusement.

'They're well drilled,' she replied equally quietly. 'Careful not to scare the children, but they're protective. And have you noticed? Hardly any machines…'

Yes… I had noticed. The cooking had been done over wood fires, which I could have brushed off as an affectation due to the ongoing beach party, except for the fact that no-one wore energy weapons, not even the guardians. The curved short swords they wore - based on an old scimitar if I remembered my swords correctly - were wide-bladed and wickedly sharp. The pistols I saw were projectiles, and looked to be large calibre.

I looked out from my vantage point to the ship floating in the bay, visible against the deepening twilight by means of lanterns strung along the sides. Similar lanterns lit the dining area we sat in, flickering flames suggesting an oil based design. On the beach itself, tall flaming torches lit the area, casting their smoky light on the proceedings outside, where an impromptu dance was starting, to the beat of hand drums and two guitars.

'That would be part of the answers I promised you,' Nero said, from somewhere behind my right shoulder. Only long practice stopped me from jumping slightly in my seat. I hate anyone sneaking up on my blind side.

'No tech. At all?' I asked. I waved my hand in the direction of the _Lightning_, hidden by the lightweight wooden wall. 'Except for the ship?'

'There's a dampening field around the island,' he replied, taking the seat next to me, which forced me to turn my chair around to look at him. Across from me, Kei leaned on the table with her elbows and stared at him, whilst Hannibal leaned back in his chair, with a languid ease that reminded me a lot of his younger brother. Guess I knew where Harlock got it from… 'We had to leave our home in Andromeda when your war…'

I bristled at that slur, and opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. I wasn't going to justify myself to this guy, no matter how old or bloody intimidating he tried to be. Fuck it. I'd done nothing to be ashamed of.

'...chased the Machinners out of the Milky Way, and brought Promethium there. Her transport ships found slim pickings, since Andromeda was and is even more so now, sparsely populated.'

'That war was none of our making.'

Bless Kei. She always stands up for me. 'That conflict was coming whether we were involved or not. Should we have stood by and done nothing, and watched millions die to feed her machines?'

He inclined his head. 'Apologies. But the fact remains they came here, and have been a pain in my backside for the last twelve years.'

'They aren't the reason for your precautions though, are they?' I leaned back in my chair and looked him straight in the eye. 'So what the hell has your people on such high alert? Why the shield over the island? From what I've seen, the _Lightning _could easily handle a Machinner battleship, and if _Deathshadow One _is still operational, she could handle a small fleet without breaking a sweat.'

'That is probably something better shown than told,' he replied evenly. He stood up, looming over me in a way that reminded me of the way Harlock, so long ago now, had once done, when he offered me my pistol back after my spectacularly inept attempt to shoot him in the back. 'Yanez?'

'My brother?'

'Bring the prisoner to the pier.'

As Yanez walked away, I looked across at Kei, then back to our host. He smiled enigmatically. 'You'll soon see,' he said quietly. 'Will you come?'

'_Now _you ask nicely?' I couldn't help it. Mamoru comes by some of his quirks quite honestly.

'Now I'm asking nicely,' he replied breezily.

* * *

The reason for the meeting to take place on the pier soon became obvious. The structure extended into the bay for a good quarter of a mile, which put the end of it outside the field of the dampener used to shield the _Lightning _\- and, I assumed, the _Deathshadow One_.

Yanez waited for us at the end of the wooden decking with a tall man next to him, weighted down with chains. His hands were bound behind his back, secured to a collar around his neck, and hobbles chained his ankles close together to prevent him from running. The light from the oil lamps was fairly dim, but enough for me to get a decent look: about my height and build, with light brown hair and grey eyes. Fairly average in appearance - the kind of man you'd pass in the street without notice. I guessed him to be about twenty-five.

'Who is he?' Kei asked before I could. She took a step towards him, always curious, but Nero held a hand out to hold her back before I could.

'I wouldn't get too close,' he said softly. 'They are dangerous. Even chained.'

I looked again, aware of Hannibal to my left doing the same. Mister Average stared back, a slight sneer curling the corner of his mouth. Those grey eyes stared at me, and I revised my original assessment. Not average… _Arrogant_.

And those grey eyes… they were cold. Dead. They reminded me of a shark's, now I thought about it, having seen the creatures on Miraiseria. An ancient predator.

He moved, shuffling his stance as though to get more comfortable, and the movement reminded me of something else. Something I'd seen before. I just couldn't think what it was. He reminded me of someone…

Nero moved, taking the two strides needed to arrive at my side. He now had a pistol in his hand, I saw. An ancient flintlock at first glance. A second look and I smiled. 'Is that one of Tochiro's?'

Hannibal answered. 'He made a handful, before the war, for close friends and family. For me, the Cosmo Eagle; for Harlock, the Cosmo Dragoon you now own. And for Khal here…'

Nero raised the pistol and aimed it at the prisoner. Yanez had already moved out of the line of fire. 'He based mine on an old duelling pistol. But it's as powerful as any of his other creations - and we've found out the hard way it's one of the few weapons capable of killing them.'

'You're just going to kill a man in cold blood?' Hannibal asked. 'That's not like you, Khal.'

'It's not a man,' he replied bluntly. 'But even this weapon isn't a sure thing.' He fired.

The shot was dead on centre mass. At this distance, he couldn't have missed. The man should have dropped with half his torso missing.

He dropped, certainly. And there was a large hole where his left lung should have been. But then in spite of the chains, he began to get back to his feet within seconds.

No blood. As I watched, shreds of flesh flickered as though lit from within. The effect was similar to the way a hologramme shimmers as you get close enough to see through it. Within seconds the wound was gone, rebuilt and made whole. Even his clothing was restored.

The man - or creature masquerading as such - smiled.

Nero raised his gun again and fired. This time the creature's head disintegrated in the first shot. The next six blasted away at what was left of the body, which toppled into the sea, to vanish as though it had sunk like a stone.

'You might want to get down and cover your ears,' Yanez said quietly, dropping to the deck to do just that. We wasted no time following suit, which was only just in time, as the underwater explosion sent a burst of water well over thirty feet into the air as something detonated below the surface.


	6. Chapter 5

**Tabito**

The ramen shop was a small building on the corner of the main street of Tabito's one and only town. Easy to overlook, despite its location, since it had a small frontage, the only advertisement a battered, hand painted wooden sign over a door whose glass panes had seen better days, although they were, on closer inspection, scrupulously clean inside, despite the all pervasive dust. And the whitewashed walls were also only grubby with the thinnest layer of sand, since the dust was impossible to keep clear of everything.

That sign, hanging at a charming kitty-kilter angle above the doorway read 三食ラーメン堂. At some point in the distant past someone had added the translation in English below this: "Three Portion Ramen Shop", the small letters of which were faded almost to illegibility. Although the wood was cracked and worn now, after more than fifty years in Tabito's dry atmosphere, the paint was nevertheless fresh. Several times the owner of the shop had refused the offer of a newer, more modern replacement, with a gentle smile.

It wasn't as though the place lacked for business, after all.

The doorbell jingled cheerily as a teenage boy barrelled in, scuttling around the long queue of lunchtime customers, and squeezing past the fully occupied tables as he made his way towards the door at the side of the serving counter, where a fair-haired girl a couple of years his junior was serving under the watchful eye of an auburn-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties, so alike that the two had to be related.

'Mom!' Daisuke called out as he charged through into the kitchen, the delivery bag in his hands swinging from side to side. 'Got that order for the construction site?' He perched on a stool at the back wall of the kitchen and pushed dusty brown hair out of his eyes. He sniffed appreciatively. 'Save some for us, please? That smells amazing…'

'In the warmer,' his mother told him with a bright smile as she stir-fried another batch of prawns. 'It'll take at least three trips mind you, unless you can round up some helpers…'

'Wataru's out front,' he told her, grabbing a stray prawn as it made a bid for freedom from the pan, snatching it out of the air. 'Can you spare sis here?' He grinned as his sister sent her mother a pleading look over her shoulder. That Kanna and Wataru were an item had been the worst kept secret on the planet, and the pair were constantly teased by both sides of their respective families.

'Not until this lot's been served,' Selen told him. 'Nami's out back fetching some eggs - she can take the other bike, so long as you boys take care of her…'

'Like we'd do anything else?' Daisuke told her, pouting with mock indignation until she reached out to ruffle his hair, which he ducked with practised ease. 'Hey! I'm all dusty…'

'Then out of my kitchen,' she scolded lightly, with a laugh. 'I'll bring the packs to you outside. Was that a motorcycle I heard?'

'Ummhmm. Wataru talked Taro into working on that old wreck they found. It's actually for their - Mamoru's birthday - they've been working on it together, but it needed a workout…'

'I'm sure it did,' she replied drily. 'Amazing how much exercise they need. Almost as much as the horses…'

'Aunt Selen?' A girl with long brown hair and hazel eyes poked her head around the door. 'There's a message. It's Blaze.'

Selen sighed and took off her apron. 'Never fails. And they're still queuing out the door…'

The man just replacing his bowl on the counter smiled at her through a constellation of freckles. 'I can take over, Selen. With the Arcadia gone, there's not much happening around here that I can't leave for a bit.'

'Zack. Thank you. If you could see to the deliveries first and then…'

'We can swap.' The girl bounced into the kitchen. 'I'll serve, Kanna can sort out the deliveries and Uncle Zack can cook?'

Daisuke laughed. 'Seriously, Nami? You get more like your mom every day.'

She sniffed and stuck her nose in the air. '_She _says I take after papa…'

'Dai!'

At the sharp sound in his mother's voice the youth snapped to attention. 'Coming!'

Kanna, three years older than twelve-year old Nami, grinned at the younger girl. 'I love how she does that…'

'Thinking of practising on Wataru?' Nami teased as she took Kanna's place at the counter. For such emergencies, there was a step for her to stand on, and she smiled at the next customer and took his order. 'Because you don't need to - one look from you and my brother's a dribbling mess…'

* * *

Outside the door, Selen smiled listening to the chatter. _When did our children get so old_?

'Mom?'

She smiled wistfully and ruffled her youngest son's hair. 'Sorry. I still forget and find myself talking to your father some days.'

The communications room was on the way to the back yard, and he fell in beside her as she walked. It was with mixed feelings that she realised he was almost as tall as she was now. 'We all miss him, mom. Even Rei - he'd love to show dad how well he's doing. You know - that he wasn't wrong to take him in.'

'It wasn't a difficult call,' Selen replied softly. 'I'm just happy you two get on so well.'

Daisuke grinned at her. 'I loved Marin, Rowan and Raven to bits,' he said, naming his lost siblings 'and Blaze is the best, but it is nice to have someone my own age. Mind you - can't say I'm not loving having the room to myself at night… But yeah. I'll be glad when he's back. And Mamo and Freya - it's just not the same without them.'

'Not so much trouble to get into?' she asked archly.

He grinned. 'Don't know what you mean!' he called out cheerfully as he headed for the back door. 'Love you!'

'I love you too!' she called out after him 'And no riding that blasted motorbike!'

The door swung shut behind his cheery wave, and she sighed. 'What the hell made me think boys would be less trouble than the girls in my family?'

The small room behind the shop that held the warp radio link was built on top of a powerful communications array. Like most things of Lar Metallian construction, nine tenths of the ramen shop and the little house it was attached to were underground, although most of the former rebel headquarters was now decommissioned and no longer accessible from the property. Selen sat in front of the comms suite and brought up her eldest son's image on the screen.

'Blaze?'

'Mom?' He smiled, and the resemblance to his father made her heart skip a beat, just for a moment.

'Blaze. I wasn't expecting to hear from you before you got back…' she broke off, noticing the configuration of the bridge behind him. 'Darling - that isn't the bridge of the _Marin_, is it?'

'I'm on board the _Miranda_. There's been a little problem…'

She listened as he outlined the events of the past few days, a frown slowly forming on her lovely face. 'I'd hardly call losing Harlock, Kei and Hannibal in one fell swoop a "little problem",' she said eventually, steepling her fingers in front of her nose as she leaned back in her chair. 'Is Freya sure about those traces?'

He nodded. 'She's not usually wrong. I had been going to suggest you hop on board the _Arcadia _and keep her active out here, try to pin that bastard Lazarus down. We have no idea what he's up to in this sector, but he's sniffing around Herise for some reason.'

'If those are Metanoid ships and they're heading for wherever Harlock and the others are being taken, then Lazarus can wait. When will the _Arcadia…'_

'I sent the _Arcadia _to fetch you, and it should reach Tabito in two days. But with this…'

'Tell Yattaran to meet us half-way. I'll take one of the Star-class destroyers and transfer to the _Arcadia. _We'll get there a lot quicker…'

'You might even beat us there,' Blaze said. He smiled fondly at his mother. 'But I hate dragging you away…'

'Nonsense. Unlike Harlock, I know how to delegate. My problem's going to be slipping away without Wataru and your siblings finding out everyone else is getting in on the action...'

He grimaced. 'Huh. You couldn't bring Wataru along with you, could you? For my peace of mind?'

She laughed. 'Blaze - you worry too much. Your sister can take care of herself, and she's old enough to know her own mind on that subject.'

'Yeah… that's not reassuring…' he muttered darkly.

'This isn't the dark ages, Blaze. She's considerably better informed than I was at her age.'

'You grew up in a culture that tried to get by on cloning,' he pointed out.

'And look how well that turned out,' she replied drily. 'Whilst he's got a tendency to run headfirst into all kinds of trouble, I can assure you Kanna isn't one of them. Besides - he knows what I'd do to him if he put even a foot out of line.'

'It's not his feet that worry me,' he muttered.

She lowered her head briefly to hide a smile. 'Honestly, Blaze. I should think you should be more worried about the fact that Wataru, Taro and Daisuke found an old motorbike to repair - allegedly a present for Mamoru. I heard it revving up outside, only a few minutes ago…'

'Wait. What? They've got what?'

'I'll see you at the rendezvous point, darling.' She cut the connection, leaving him spluttering but distracted.

She sat back in her chair and stared over the top of the screen, to a crack in the plaster on the opposite wall. From this angle it always looked like a small cat with antlers. 'It takes some serious balls to kidnap three of the most infamous - and dangerous - people in the galaxy,' she mused out loud. 'But why those three? If it's another Deathshadow captain, why not just Harlock? Or Hannibal?'

'Mum?'

She turned to the door, to see her daughter standing there, a worried frown on her lovely face. 'Kanna?'

'Has something happened?'

Selen took a deep breath. 'Nothing I can't handle. I'm going to have to help your brother out for a little while. Would you tell Zack I need to speak to him once the shop closes?' She took another long breath, realising there was another conversation she'd need to have. 'And tell Wataru and Taro to get back here once they're done.' She sighed. Persuading that pair to stay behind with their brother and two partners in crime in the thick of things wouldn't be easy, but slipping away without telling them? 'Tempting,' she muttered, as Kanna slipped away. She turned back to the console and reached for the planetary commlink. 'Mirai - put me through to HQ, would you?'

She could, at least, make sure they were well guarded.

* * *

_Admiral Class Battleship: Miranda_

Ali folded his arms and stared out of the view screen, currently displaying a false colour view of Andromeda against a background enhanced to show the CBR, dark matter and ZPE concentration in the area. The trail left by the three _Phantasma_ ships was all too clear. They left _nothing_ in their wake: dark tunnels in the multi-coloured fabric of existence, with thin contrails spiralling away from the main path. On magnification these were revealed to be vast mandelbrot curves ripping their way through space-time with no regard for the consequences.

'If I'd known you were going to do a complete one-eighty, I could have stayed on board _Arcadia_,' he muttered, a scowl twisting his face. 'My own comfy bed… Luna... '

'Quit your bitchin'.' Anita slapped him on the back hard enough to send him stumbling down the two steps to the main bridge deck below the captain's station if she hadn't caught his arm as he pinwheeled. 'All you ever do is moan. I sometimes wonder what the hell Luna sees in you.'

Ali eyed up the Arcadia's quartermaster and head cook belligerently. The woman was only a couple of inches shorter than he was, and about twice as wide - not all of it fat by a long way - Anita had once been an SPG sergeant, and wasn't someone you wanted to mess with. He drew himself up haughtily. 'There are,' he said self-importantly, 'some things that a gentleman does not discuss.'

'Thank Lar for that,' Blaze murmured. 'I think I can live the rest of a hopefully very long life without hearing about your sexual gymnastics…'

Ali leaned over him and patted him on the shoulder. 'I can give you some pointers, privately,' he said in a stage whisper.

'Thanks Ali,' Blaze removed the hand and patted it patronisingly. 'But you're really not my type…'

Ali sniffed and stomped away. 'You can go off some people,' he said huffily as he strode off the bridge, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Blaze leaned back in his seat.

'I thought he'd never leave…' He smiled up at Anita who was busy arranging a covered dish and mug next to his chair. He sniffed appreciatively. 'Anita? You're spoiling me…'

'Your mother wouldn't want you to starve,' she replied kindly. 'And like Harlock, you've got a distressing tendency to forget to eat when there's trouble.'

'To be fair, we haven't reached "trouble" yet.' He looked down at the floorscreen, which almost filled the area between his dais and the forward control consoles. This displayed the time-radar image from the small system outside the main spiral arm of M31, currently in the projected path of three _Phantasma _class vessels. 'Three of them...I hope whoever took Harlock and Hannibal has something big enough to help out, because the _Arcadia_ took some serious damage against just one of those according to dad, back during the initial phases of the war.'

'The _Miranda's _a tough old bird,' one of Hannibal's crew spoke up. 'She's not in the _Arcadia's _class by a country mile, but she can hold her own.'

'Without the _Arcadia's _self-repair system?' Blaze tried not to sound worried, and failed miserably. He was distracted by a hand on his shoulder, as light as a feather, and looked up into Freya's wide, luminous eyes.

'She has some rudimentary systems,' Freya told him. 'Tochiro apparently tested a few things for the main Deathshadow class on her, in miniature. He didn't want to go full scale though, with the dark matter controller. But she does have a working model, and she did take a massive blast when the Deathshadows blew… If the crew are willing, Mamoru and I can see if we can get some of those systems boosted a bit. I can then work the dark matter controller. But it'll take a few days…'

'Mamoru?' Blaze glanced over to where the youth stood, leaning against the hull in his father's favourite pose: arms folded, ankles crossed, and his hair flopping down over his missing eye.

'Taro and I have both had Tochiro and Mimay as tutors. Plus the AI for this ship has a lot of stuff in its drives relating to the original project. The ship's hull does have a basic self-repair mechanism, which was boosted by the absorption a hundred years ago. If you think Gramps won't mind us messing with his ship…'

'Under the circumstances, I think he'll understand, if not approve,' Blaze replied dryly. 'I'll take responsibility. You do what you need to.' He raised a hand as Mamoru pushed himself off the wall and straightened up. 'But do not - under any circumstances - take any risks. Blow this ship up and I guarantee there won't be a hiding place in three galaxies where Hannibal won't find you…'

Mamoru snorted. 'Puh-lease. I'm not Old Harlock!' He wrapped an arm around Freya's tiny waist. 'C'mon sis, looks like we'll be busy for a bit. Blaze - we'll be in Engineering if Rei comes looking for us.'

'You don't want him to help?' Blaze called after them as they walked out arm in arm. Mamoru looked over his shoulder and pantomimed a shudder. 'Hell no. Not whilst we're working on the controller anyway. His Motherball and that controller would _not _mix well…'

'Captain?' One of the crew called out. 'Ready when you are.'

'IN-SKIP go,' he called out quietly. 'Farah - take the helm. Keep the crew on a six hour shift pattern. Anyone non-essential can take a break.' He stood up, stretched and then picked up the tray Anita had left for him, the ex-marine having left a few minutes earlier.

'And you, sir?'

'Having a little chat with my little brother about the wisdom of inviting himself onto a dark matter enhanced battleship…'

* * *

Rei was alone in the quarters he shared with Mamoru. Blaze watched from the open doorway as the boy murmured something to the device on the bed beside him - a large metal globe the size and shape of a soccer ball, but inset with several dials and glowing gauges, lit from within with an eerie green glow. Rei laughed lightly as though in response to something and then looked up at his older brother from under unruly black bangs. 'Oh, hi Blaze. We're finally underway?'

'I'm not sure I feel quite that perky about it, but yes. May I come in?' He got a noncommittal shrug in reply that years of dealing with younger brothers and other assorted teens tended to mean anything from "sure" to "whatever". 'You know… you coming along might not have been the safest course of action, kiddo. If we go up against these Phantasma ships…'

'I know the risks, nii-san.' Rei's voice was melodious and pleasant. He stared into Blaze' eyes with a gaze far older than his apparent years. 'But I'm getting better at controlling it - and stronger.' He smiled, and his usually reserved face lit up. 'You're worried about Mamoru and Freya's tweaks down in engineering? Don't be. This ship's levels - even with the changes - won't be enough to interfere with the Zero Point Energy I use. But I told them I'd stay out of the way.' He looked down, and grinned even more widely at the tray. 'Dinner?' he asked hopefully.

Blaze laughed and ruffled his hair, earning a "gerroff" for his pains. 'Just like any normal teenage boy, huh?' He pushed the tray over until it was between them. 'Anita always does too much, I thought we'd share, since you have a black hole where your stomach ought to be...'

'Ooh… exaggerating much? You should see Dai eat if you think _I've _got an appetite. Still, that might be too much for _you_,' Rei quipped, grabbing a nori-wrapped rice ball. 'But I _am _a growing boy…'

'Rei…'

'It's fine, Blaze. I know you worry. And I love you for it. You… Marin… you accepted me right from the time dad decided to offer me a home. I'm not your brother in blood, but that stopped mattering a long time ago. A lot of people would be shit scared about what I could do…' Blue fire danced along his fingertips as he licked them clean, and he grinned again as Blaze rolled his eyes.

'You're hopeless…'

'You're scared _for _me, not of me. It matters, B. I'm an android in a world that despises and fears AIs. I'm a weapon in the shape of a little boy…'

'Not so little these days,' Blaze pointed out, narrowly winning the grab for the last rice ball. 'Hah!'

'Well I have to let you win occasionally,' Rei said a laugh. 'I'm not sure what I would have been without Dad, and Harlock… and you, Marin, Mom… Dai… From the day I arrived on Tabito you made me part of your family, and treated me like a normal kid…'

'Apart from the bits where we couldn't.'

A shrug. 'Well, I did give you a few headaches…'

Blaze raised an eyebrow, and Rei grinned like a cheshire cat. 'Okay, okay… more than a few. But I want to be useful, B. I can't cower on Tabito for the rest of my life pretending to be normal, afraid to face what I am. Mamoru…'

'Mamoru was not injured because of you, kiddo,' Blaze said softly. He gathered his brother into his arms and gave him a hug - brief, because like most sixteen year old boys, he wriggled to get out of the embarrassing show of affection. 'If you'd tried to fight those Mazone either your own power would have killed you, or they would. You needed to grow, to become an adult, with an adult's strength and a stronger body. You need to stop trying to make amends for stuff that wasn't your fault.'

'He's my friend. And I can help. ZPE is the primal energy of the universe, B. These ships… these "Lords of Shadow" Freya talks about - they're _part _of that Primal Energy. Relics from the previous universe, she says. Dark Matter might not be enough, this time, nii-san.' At his side the motherball glowed and flashed as though agreeing.

'I'm not convinced you're strong enough yet to start channelling so much of that,' Blaze told him, a worried frown on his face. 'And we've not established properly just how well your motherball has been repaired. Rei… be careful.'

'You're not going to ground me?'

'Would it work?' The brothers shared smirks so alike any observer would have assumed they really were related. 'Mom wants me to keep you safe. Dai however probably has his eyes on your stuff if you don't come back…' They both laughed, and Rei punched Blaze lightly on the arm.

'I promise, B. I'll be careful. But I don't want to be wrapped in cotton wool forever. I'm not sixteen, no matter what I look like. I'm tougher and stronger than I look, and way smarter than kids this age.'

'But not invincible,' Blaze pointed out.

'None of us are, B,' Rei said seriously. 'Not even the _Arcadia _if it fights alone. But we've all got each other's backs, right? You and me, Mom, Hannibal… Harlock and Kei… if we're not invincible individually, we're tough as all hell together. Which is why we're getting them back. Why whatever's heading for that planet's in for one hell of a shock.'

'I bloody well hope so,' Blaze replied with some force. 'If nothing else, they got mom's attention…'

Rei sniggered nastily. 'Well, they're screwed then, right?'

'Better hope _you _don't get her attention, kiddo,' he replied. 'I might cut you some slack and let you cut loose, but to her, you're one of her boys - and trust me, you can get to my age and she _still _thinks we should be grounded until we're in triple figures for our own protection. She still…'

'She still misses Marin, and Dad, and the little boys,' Rei added sadly. 'I love that she'd tear the universe apart to protect us, but I hate that she's so sad.'

Blaze patted him on the knee. 'Then don't get into trouble, little brother. If you won't stay safe because I ask it…'

'Ooh… low blow.' He picked up the motherball and tossed it lightly into the air, laughing at his brother's almost infinitesimal wince. 'Don't worry, we've got this. Now go get some sleep - according to the coordinates Freya found we're a few days out and you're not getting any younger…'

'Brat.' But Blaze stood, and walked to the door. He stopped with one hand resting on the side, then with a shake of his head left the room and strode off down the corridor with a slightly more energetic step than he'd arrived.

The motherball flashed, and Rei smiled down at the hi-tech ball - the remnant of the sexaroid used to create him. 'Yeah. He'd walk through fire for all of us - and so would Harlock. How can I do anything less?'

Another flash, and he placed the ball down on the bed and patted it gently. 'Sorry. _We…' _He pushed the remote for the door and waited until it had closed before looking down at her. Blue fire crackled between them, and he grinned wolfishly. 'Better keep it down though - last time we tried this we set off all the internal sensors.'

Concentrating hard, he gathered the blue lightning, and began to trickle it out in a single, concentrated beam towards a small target he'd set up against the far bulkhead.


	7. Chapter 6

'_You're a fucking lunatic_!'

I was glad it was Kei doing the screaming. However justified, the one thing Captain Harlock didn't do was scream in people's faces, no matter how tempting - or justified. Like the rest of us she was dripping wet from head to foot, her silk tunic plastered to her very shapely, athletic torso, although I seemed to be the only one noticing.

'I'm inclined to agree with her, Khal,' Hannibal added rather acidly as he pushed his hair off his face before it dripped more water into his eyes. 'A little warning?'

Nero just shrugged and looked directly at me, gauging my reaction. Well, I'd learned how to do imperturbable over the years, along with "stoic badass" and "cold-blooded bastard". The trouble was, as I soon realised, that Captain Nero had had more practice at it. Plus the effect was ruined by being dripping wet. I probably looked like a drowned rat; Nero - in only his sarong-pants - looked like this was his natural element, with water dripping off his black hair and running off tanned, muscled shoulders.

Thankfully Hannibal came from the more talkative branch of the family twig. 'Khalsa, I really hope that reaction back there wasn't as powerful as it looked…'

'Oh, it was a helium 3 fusion reaction,' Yanez answered breezily as we walked back towards the beach. 'Don't worry - there's little to no radiation from it. They have helium three metabolising mitochondria analogues. When they die they go boom.'

'Descriptive,' I added my two-credits worth in my best sarcastic drawl. He just smiled at me as though I'd just complimented him. 'What was it?'

'A metanoid.'

'I'm none the wiser,' I said dryly. Not strictly true - I had heard the word before, in connection with the origins of the Nibelung race. Some great mistake - and I gathered that should really be capitalised - from their early years. But why should I do all the work? I was still feeling pissy about being doped and kidnapped. And soaked. 'Enlighten me.'

Hannibal coughed. 'Nasty cough, maybe you should take something for it?' I snarked. He gave me the kind of look I used to associate with my father when I'd indulged in my smart mouth.

Kei sighed, linked her arm with Hannibal's, and smiled up at him. 'Ignore him. For some reason he thinks playing dumb makes him look smart.'

'Four generations and the apple didn't fall very far from the tree?' Nero sounded amused. He reached over and patted Kei's hand paternally. 'Why don't you start by telling me what _you _know?' he asked, flashing me a toothy smile that was far from reassuring.

'I've never seen one before, so you have the advantage,' I returned smoothly. 'Although I was under the impression they didn't look so… human…'

'A dangerous assumption.' Once again it was Yanez who picked up the ball, a significant look passing between him and his captain. 'We've no idea what they look like in their natural bodies, but they can sequester any human body and take it over.'

'Like the sequestration the Nibelung practice?' Hannibal asked.

'Not exactly. The nibelung force their way into a living mind, and impose their will upon it - hence why some of them wear masks to suppress the host personality. It's where Doppler got the tech from…' Yanez shot a rather more sympathetic glance towards the back of Nero's head as the man strode ahead of us.

'Yamori was able to resist…' I mused. 'But it cost him.'

Several years ago one nibelung - Hagan - had taken over the body of one of Queen Promethium's oldest friends and associates, a key player in her original rebellion. He'd fought off the possessor and sacrificed himself to help us prevent the wholesale slaughter that would have opened a dimensional rift in the Hourglass Nebula. The endeavour hadn't been completely successful, as we were, in between other unforeseen catastrophes, still trying to work out what the ever-loving-fuck the nibelung had been trying to do, and what was going to happen to us when it finally opened fully.

Yamori Daisuke had been a grade A dick, and I still had the scars on my back from our first meeting, but I couldn't fault his devotion to the woman Promethium had once been, or his bravery. We owed him. Hell - Selen had named Daisuke after him.

Kei expressed an opinion of the deceased which was unrepeatable in even marginally polite company; but then, she can see my scars - I can't, and it's rather adorable when she's being protective.

I outlined our previous encounter with body-hopping, briefly, to our hosts. Hannibal, since he'd been peripherally involved in the affair, knew most of it. He'd been leading the research into the Gate of Yedar ever since the rift had opened. He had a personal stake in the side-effects, after all…

That last part we both left out, as the pair quizzed us between them. They operated as a smooth team - Yanez the garrulous inquisitor, Nero listening, and only interjecting the occasional question to clarify a point. We were sitting on a grassy sand dune at the foot of a cliff, above the high water line, boots off (well our hosts were quick to remove footwear and it seemed like a good idea). Kei was apparently trying to bury my bare toes in the hot sand whilst we sat as she dug her feet into the sand, scattering it in my direction.

'It's this nano-technology that worries me,' Nero said eventually. 'That sounds altogether too much like the techniques the metanoids use.'

'Metanoids take dead bodies,' Yanez explained. 'Cell by cell, much like how Promethium's nano-form mechanisation works. But they cannot infiltrate a living mind, probably because they're not a carbon-based lifeform. In fact, they're not from our universe at all.'

'Hence the constant surveillance?' Kei asked, kicking more sand over my bare foot. 'You don't let anyone out of sight, at any time.'

Nero inclined his head. 'Just so. Here, on the island, we can control the environment more, and the dampening field should suppress their abilities. But we dare not let our vigilance drop - one of our outposts was completely over-run because we let our guard down. Never again.'

'Hence the pier?' Hannibal stared out towards the long wooden structure. 'We were outside your field, not just to make sure your weapons worked.'

'We kept one as an example. You needed to see,' Yanez explained. 'And forgive my rough treatment getting you here, but we needed to be sure you were still yourselves.'

'How?' Hannibal was genuinely curious. His eyes had a way of lighting up that gave a lie to the otherwise stoic demeanour he affected. 'Why not just test us? There must be some physical differences…'

Nero shook his head slowly. 'Not that we can detect, and it's doubly difficult for those of us exposed to dark matter. The replication is exact, down to the molecular level. The kind of scanners that can detect changes at the cellular level or below would destroy what they scan, even if we had access to that kind of equipment - which we don't. And -' he raised a hand to forestall three separate version of the same question, 'Even if we did, no - scanning a cell or a sample wouldn't work. Once separated from the whole, the cells revert to normal. We don't understand it - Yngwie mutters something about a quantum shift taking place when removed from an active field of observation...'

'Which we suspect is simply nibelung for "I don't know",' Yanez interjected with a sarcastic drawl that rivalled my own.

'But what we saw…' Kei began.

'They can self-repair at an incredible rate. Almost impossible to kill. They utilise zero-point energy the way we metabolise oxygen. It fuels them. In battle, they're almost unstoppable. Their ships are surrounded by ribbons of dark matter, and they use both dark matter and zero point energy in their weapons.' Yanez explained.

Nero took up the conversation: 'They are _Shayāṭīn... Djinni. _Shadows on the wall of creation. They know not hunger, or thirst. In their natural form, they are like forces of nature - dark storms that destroy everything in their path.' Nero had stood during his speech and paced up and down in front of us, his greenish-hazel eyes flashing. 'But when they take a physical form, they do have limitations. They can copy the memories they find, mimic those they kill, but they cannot hide their true nature forever. They lack empathy, for one. There is no joy in them, no laughter - but also no pain.'

'So you kept us in a lab, basically?' I glanced at my companions. 'You watched us, to see how we interacted? How we responded to your niggles?'

Yanez patted my arm familiarly. 'I'm sorry, lad. Had to be sure. Otherwise we would have just made contact the normal way.' He grinned. 'No hard feelings?'

'I'll think about it.'

Kei kicked my shin, but barefoot, not hard enough to do much more than give my calf a gentle push. 'All very well - but how do we know _you're_ not already sequestrated?' she asked. 'We've only got your word that you're not.'

'If we were, you'd already be dead,' Nero pointed out bluntly. 'Metanoids don't tend to mess around.'

'Again,' it being my turn to ask the awkward questions, 'we only have your word for that. But let's say we agree that you're on the level, for now - what the hell do you want with _us_?'

Once again the pair looked to each other before one of them spoke, the gesture reminding me of the way Kei and I looked to each other for confirmation. Once again Yanez was the chatty one. 'That gate Loki opened nearly twenty years ago has been seeing a bit of traffic. Traffic that got an awful lot more frequent after Promethium relocated here all those years ago. We've got a couple of contacts in her court, and from them we know Loki's still intent on widening the damn thing. Unfortunately for him, there just isn't the population base for them to raid for souls in Andromeda - unless he wants to tip his hand and really piss the bitch queen off.'

'Not hard,' Hannibal drawled. 'She always did have a tendency to go off half-cocked.'

'And remind me again who thought it was a good idea to make _her_ queen, and not Selen?' I asked.

I take it back. That wasn't my father's exasperated glare. It was my mother's.

'You'd prefer _Selen _in charge of the death-squads?' he asked sweetly.

'Selen wouldn't have fallen for Loki's crap,' I shot back.

'Selen wouldn't have had a choice, once they put that crown on her head,' he reminded me gently.

I had forgotten. The coronation ceremony involves brain-washing the next queen with the memories of her predecessors. Whilst Selen had neatly dodged her fate, Yayoi, her sister, had not. And the galaxy - two galaxies - had paid the price. Hell, we were all still paying it.

'If I may continue?' Yanez spoke with the long-suffering air of a couple of my old teachers.

'Please.' Kei, ever the peace-maker, after rolling her eyes at us. Nero's barking laugh suggested he found the whole exchange rather amusing.

'Sorry,' he said, when he was on the receiving end of two family stares. 'Mamoru, it's like watching you argue with yourself. He's far more civilised than your brother.'

'Thank you.'

I got that wide, predatory smile. 'Who said that was a compliment?'

'Never,' Hannibal advised me, 'make the mistake of thinking Harlock was always the one leading them into trouble before the war. My brother attracted a certain kind of man…'

'Now that was just gossip,' Nero joked. 'Though there was that bar on Blue Rose…'

Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end of Yanez' frown, and Kei's turn to laugh out loud. She shrugged when she noticed she was the cynosure of all eyes. 'Sorry. It's just funny to watch someone else be on the end of it for a change. Yanez - is there a reason we put up with them?'

He smiled at her, the gesture taking at least a decade off his age. 'We love them dearly. Otherwise we'd probably just kill them.' Assured that his unruly audience was quiet again, he continued: 'We've been chased off three worlds since that rift opened. This world, between the galaxies, was our last chance, since the captain didn't want to return to the Milky Way unless he had to. They attacked the first two openly, and we were able - just - to fend them off. This last time they infiltrated, and almost succeeded in killing us and taking what they came for.'

'_Deathshadow One_?' I hazarded. Both men nodded. 'They're coming back…' I mused. Another synchronised chin-dip. 'That's why you want us? Then why not contact us directly, have us bring our ships?'

'And risk that you were not who you appeared to be?' Yanez shook his head. 'And really, it was my call, to bring you here. You see, we were not privy to one piece of information before I left to fetch you. One that proved to be rather pivotal…'

Oh. Well. I could see where _this _was going. I wondered just how long I'd have to live before I was out from under this particular shadow - and semi-resident pain in my arse. 'You thought the _Arcadia _was still under _your _Harlock's control.' I shook my head 'What rock were you lot hiding under for the past few years? My wanted poster's been on more walls than that bloody band from Gamilas my kids can't get enough of…'

'Artistic Licence?' Yanez quipped. Hannibal developed another coughing fit and the other man slapped him helpfully between the shoulder blades.

Nero stood, looming over me much the way Harlock once had, only broader, heavier, darker and considerably more dangerous looking. 'Walk with me for a little way,' he said. I looked at Kei, who gave me a little what-the-hell shrug, and decided it might be worth getting him away from his more talkative half for a while.

Leaving Kei to walk back along the beach with an escort of two wily old foxes, I fell in alongside the only other surviving Deathshadow captain I'd met.

* * *

I'd expected at least a token effort at an awkward silence, but Nero jumped right in before we were even out of earshot. 'You do look a little like him,' he began. A hand was waved in the vicinity of my face, the gesture taking in - I assumed - my eyepatch and the scar across my cheek. 'And not just the scar…'

'A present from my older brother.' I rubbed it absently, and just stopped myself from fiddling with the patch. 'As was this, in a way. A blaster shot he fired across my face fried the nano-cam and transmitter I was persuaded to let someone slap on top of my eye.'

'He got his scar planting his face in the road in a motorbike accident,' Nero said quietly. 'Quite a night, that was.' I waited but he didn't elaborate. 'No, I meant around the face.'

'We don't look _that _much alike, if you take away the matching eyepatches...'

'I always wondered when he lost that eye...' Nero winced. 'That would have been a pisser - he loved that Space Wolf Tochiro customised…'

'I don't think it cramped his style much,' I replied drily. Which was true - that little baby had combat assistance most pilots could only have wet dreams about.

'Well, It's there if you know what to look for - and your family seem to specialise in head-turners.' He smiled. 'You must have your share of second looks, but him… dear god, the man could cause whiplash in a crowd…' His wicked grin made a reappearance. 'Not that he gave a shit, as a rule.'

I did laugh at that, because it was true enough. 'Don't you hate him?' I asked as casually as I could. 'For what happened?'

'Hate?' He shook his head slowly. 'Maybe. Once. It took a while, after Hell spat us back out, to gather my wits. Longer still to realise just what had happened to us. To Earth. And it wasn't a good time to be visible - the Gaia Coalition was very quick to track down ships that had survived their first cull - I didn't want to find out what they'd do to one of the ships caught up in the actual chain reaction… By the time I'd figured most of it out, several years had gone past. I'd heard rumours he was on the move, and we got reports of systems where _Arcadia _had been seen. I did try to catch up to him a few times. Not sure what I'd have done with him once I'd caught him, though.' He laughed sharply. 'Stringing him up by his testicles might have been an option, but I never did catch up to him - any time we knew where he'd been, he was long gone.' A shrug. 'Besides - we couldn't die, and recovered from most wounds, so what would be the point?'

I said nothing for a few minutes, processing his words, wondering if I'd understood correctly. 'You didn't know then? What he was doing?'

'Know what?'

'Harlock's plan. What he planned to do with the oscillators he stole?'

He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to face him. 'The dimensional oscillators? The bloody solar-system busters Tochiro's father designed and Hechi stole to use against us? I thought Mamoru blew that supply base to shit before he red-lined the Deathshadow trying to get back to Earth?'

Okay… _that _was news… I filed it for later. 'I thought they were for removing hazardous areas of space?'

'Rather depends on how you define a hazard,' he growled out. I filed that as well. Not a fan of the Doppler/Hechi card…? I'd have to introduce him to Ali...

'He took a hundred of them. Apparently Mimay told him it might be possible to rewind time, if he blew enough of the nodes of time - something about destroying the shackles of linearity…'

'Son of a fucking _bitch_!'

I held my position as he exploded. No easy thing with six foot four of solid muscle pacing up and down in front of you bellowing in an unknown language. He finished up standing facing the hall - still a good hundred yards away - and bellowing "Yngwie!' at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.

We were, as everyone seemed to be in this small colony - shadowed by several other people, at a discrete distance. There must have been some communication protocol, because a tall, slender figure came sauntering out of the wooden hall towards us with that catlike grace that only the nibelung can carry off.

I'd never seen one of the adult nibelung males. The handful of living controllers we'd rescued on Niflheim since discovering that there were still some survivors some years ago had been mostly girls, and all were still very young, physically. So I'd no idea of knowing if Yngwie was typical of his kind, or his almost feminine, delicate prettiness was unique to him. And oh, Earth and Stars, he was pretty. Taller than Mimay, I judged, as he approached. His features just as delicate as hers or Freya's. Similarly blessed with that deceptively frail attenuated form, and the only concession to masculinity I could see was that he had no feminine curves. His hair was possibly a few shades lighter than Mimay's, closer to Freya's platinum shade, and shorter - only brushing the tops of his shoulders. His eyes were darker, and slightly narrower than either Mimay's or Freya's. On the other hand, it was a sunny day, he could just have been squinting…

'Nero? Any reason why you're bellowing my name loud enough to be heard on the mainland?' His voice was typically, for his people, bell-like, but in a deeper register than I expected, at odds with his almost dainty body. 'Who is this?' He looked me over from head to foot, making so secret of the fact that he found me somewhat wanting, with a supercilious air that set my teeth on edge.

'Yngwie, this is the current captain of Deathshadow Four - '

'I suppose this one calls himself Captain Harlock as well?' His tone was more than a little confrontational.

'Það fer eftir því hverjir spyrja.' _It depends on who asks_. 'engin mannasiði…' I added in an undertone deliberately loud enough to be heard, hoping I'd got that right. It must have been in the right ballpark at least because after the startled look I got for speaking (or mangling, as Freya often called it) his language, he did at least wince slightly at my suggestion he had no manners.

'Fyrirgefðu.' He inclined his head slightly. Since I can be magnanimous when I want to be, I accepted the apology. The look in his eyes though was anything but apologetic. I mentally marked him up in the "dick" column.

'Back down, Yngwie. This one's okay.' Nero sounded amused by the exchange. Me, I was wishing I had my sabre at the very least. The gravity blade might not work but it could still deal out some damage, if I needed it. Left alone with this sniffy little twat, I suspected I'd want it…

'If you say so. Where's the Destroyer?' He looked around as though expecting Harlock to spring up and yell "boo" at him.

'Gone,' I replied. Well… not exactly but I didn't see the point of getting into the intricacies of the existence issues of my predecessor unless I absolutely had to. For example, if it would distract his victims from trying to make _me _pay for his mistakes…

'A moment…' Nero drew Yngwie out of earshot, and the two began a whispered, but quite obviously heated exchange that involved a lot of hand waving in my direction, and a restraining hand on the nibelung's arm on at least two occasions.

I waited, folding my arms over my chest and doing my best to look as though my ears weren't twitching every time I heard my name mentioned. In the time they took to have this little discussion, Kei arrived with my boots. 'What's the argument?'

'Harlock's stupid plan, I think.' She elbowed me in the ribs. 'What was that for?'

'Would you have had a better one?'

'I did, remember? Save the universe, romance the girl, save the galaxy - several times I might add - travel around in the coolest ship ever built and try not to get myself killed doing it.'

The agitated discussion having ended, Yngwie practically ran back to where I stood, his tiny mouth open as though about to say something… only to bounce off my outstretched hand with a look of surprise on his face I didn't think nibelung were capable of. He'd probably have landed on his delicate derriere if Kei hadn't been feeling charitable and caught him by the arm as he pinwheeled backwards. 'Boundaries, puppy,' I tsked and wagged a finger at him. 'I guard my personal space.'

Behind him Nero looked as though he was choking on something, the corners of his mouth twitching in an effort not to smile. Rather like a cat, Yngwie did his best to draw in on himself, straighten up, and pretend nothing had happened. 'Relax,' I told him. 'The universe is still here.' For now… but why borrow trouble by going into that part just yet?

'Mimay's still alive?' he asked. Seeing his earnest expression, I revised my estimate of his relative age down considerably. A hundred and twenty years or not, he was, I suspected, a lot younger than Mimay. Still a dick though. I lowered my still outstretched hand, just in case he had any ideas about rubbing up against it like a kitten. I'd heard about this one from Tochiro - given half a chance he'd have been all over Harlock like a rash…

'Alive, and irritatingly enigmatic.'

'I thought I was the only one left…'

'Not by a long way,' I assured him. 'Though some of your race seem to have developed a nasty habit of possessing other species - one reason we have the current crisis in the Hourglass Nebula.'

'I'd suspected that the Machinners had had contact with my race…' he clutched his hair in a remarkably human fashion, as though wanting to tear it out by the roots. 'But Mimay… why would she do that? Why tell Harlock about the Nodes of Time?'

'Very long story,' I said, perhaps more sharply than I intended. But I was drying out rapidly, the sun was scorching, and I wanted to go somewhere I could get the sand out from between my toes and put my boots on. 'Table it for now. I -' I broke off because Hannibal was handing me my gun belts. I raised an eyebrow as I took them. 'Thanks.' I buckled on the sabre, but gave the cosmo dragoon to Kei, since she'd been caught without her brace of monstrous bolters. Hannibal had already strapped on the portable cannon he laughingly refers to as a pistol. Our positions meant I was the only one looking over Hannibal's shoulder, as a large cloud appeared on the horizon, heading straight for us far faster than a band of rain should be moving. Since the rest of the sky was cloudless, I stared at the phenomenon with a growing frown.

'Harlock?' Kei tugged on my shirt sleeve, concerned.

'Nero… I don't want to worry you, but there's a cloud out there…'

He looked. 'We do get rain,' he began. Then he frowned in his turn.

'Moving against the wind?' Hannibal was definitely a chip off the old block. We'd both got our weapons drawn between one breath and the next. 'Dark storms, you said?'

Nero looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon. 'It can't get through the shield… can it?'

'Nero.' Yanez turned a worried look on his captain, who just nodded. Yanez grabbed Yngwie, and ran towards the hall, nibelung in tow, shouting something as he went that I couldn't quite hear. From the pealing of bells that rang out from a tower on the far end, obviously a well rehearsed warning. Nero's people were already running for cover, and the cloud was moving in fast.

'The shield must be down...' Nero drew his cosmo flintlock, and Kei had my dragoon in hand, the four of us facing down the oncoming storm.

'Destroying that metanoid was obviously a mistake,' I muttered to Hannibal. As it approached, I could see green flashes firing in the roiling cloud - so familiar. 'That's a dark matter cloud…'

'Could it be hiding a ship?' Kei asked.

'Too small.' It might have hidden a fighter - something space wolf sized - but I doubted it. It was too protean in form, constantly changing shape. 'Centre mass, people, on my command.' I raised the sabre and sighted along the barrel even as I thumbed the power to maximum. Maximum range for the rifle was longer than the pistols - I could have fired, but I figured we'd only get one good shot. I just hoped that Hannibal's and Nero's weapons had similar specs to the dragoon, despite their different designs.

The cloud reached the point where the incoming tide lapped against the shore, coming fast. There was a static build up in the air around us, rather like the feeling just before a storm…

'Fire!'

Four of the most powerful hand weapons ever created fired simultaneously, hitting the cloud dead centre.

And the world went dark, a violent scream torn from the very depths of hell forcing us to our knees as it surrounded us. I could feel the cold - bone deep - as it surrounded me. I was blind, deaf… green flashes broke the darkness, stabbing at me. I could feel Kei at my back. I was pretty sure I knew where the others were. It might have been my imagination, but I was sure there was a darker, blacker heart to this shadow, where the green lightning was brighter. It took every ounce of strength I had to lift the sabre rifle, my arm trembling as I held it out.

I fired.


	8. Chapter 7

'Harlock! Harlock!'

I opened my eyes, and for a moment, felt that surge of panic upon waking when the lights weren't on. Slowly, very slowly, the darkness cleared as I blinked, and I was staring blearily into Hannibal's face.

'Harlock!' Kei's voice, sounding just as worried as our ancestor's. I struggled to sit up, assisted - or hindered - by hands on both sides of my back and one dainty little set of fingers on my bare chest that I could only hope were Kei's.

Once upright, but still on my arse on freezing cold sand, I swallowed had and wondered when the world would stop spinning. I was also shivering in thirty-five degree heat...

Someone placed a jacket over my shoulders - my own - and I drew it around me gratefully, until I noticed Kei's shivers against my torso. I drew her close and covered her shoulders with it as best I could, the gesture a convenient cover for the fact that she was the only thing keeping me upright. Around us, all was chaos, as people ran around shouting orders; children were rounded up by their elders, urging everyone towards the shelter of the large hall. Nero's people fell into _very_ distinct age groups. Most were young adults, between maybe twenty to twenty-five. There were very few children under ten. In all the scurrying I spotted - out of over two hundred adults - maybe a dozen who were older than thirty.

File that one for later...

The cold seeping into my backside via the thin silk pantaloons I was wearing brought my head back into the more important game. With Kei's help, I got to my still rather shaky legs. Hannibal looked only marginally less crap than I felt, Kei was a white as a sheet, and Nero was being helped to his feet by his bosom companion, looking pale even under his dark tan.

Interesting… the two people most compromised by dark matter had been hit hardest, and it had made its way unerringly towards the four of us.

I looked around, seeing no sign of the thing that had attacked us. There had been several people on the beach between us and it, before it hit, and there was no sign of any activity indicating casualties.

'It wanted _us…' _I murmured. 'Huh.'

'You noticed that as well?' Hannibal asked in his quiet voice. He passed me my gravity sabre - I must have dropped it after firing - and examined his own piece closely. 'I think Tochiro just saved our hides… Again.' He holstered the massive piece he laughingly calls a pistol, but the rest of us have frequently suggested should be swivel mounted on the bow of his ship. Modelled after a serious piece of masculine over-compensation from the Twentieth Century, his Cosmo Eagle packed enough of a punch to knock the unwary totally off their feet - occasionally to the amusement of its owner and interested bystanders when someone attempted to deprive him of his weapon and use it against him. Though to be fair, limp-wristing _any _of Tochiro's handguns is a good way to badly sprain said wrist at the very least. I turned over the weapon I held, although the skull-shaped hilt didn't show any sign of the inner workings. It had taken three Cosmo pistols _and _a gravity sabre to take out that shadow - something that didn't bode well for future interactions.

'It headed straight for us,' Kei said weakly, still leaning against me. I wasn't too sure who was holding who up. She holstered my cosmo dragoon. 'What the hell was it?'

'A shadow,' Nero replied darkly. 'A dark storm…' _Mister life and soul of the party… no wonder he'd gotten on so well with _his _Harlock..._

'And here I thought you were being metaphorical,' Hannibal drawled. 'Did we kill it?'

'Was it even _alive_?' I poked the sand - still chilly under my bare feet - with the tip of my sabre. 'Whatever it was is gone, but we did _something _to it. There's a substantial temperature differential that wasn't there before. It's as though it sucked up all the heat in the area around us. I think it might have killed us by cold alone, if we hadn't fired on it. Whether we destroyed it, or simply fed it, I've no idea.' I gave Nero and Yanez searching looks, but they looked as puzzled as I felt. 'Surely you must have had some contact…?'

Yanez shook his head slowly. 'They were already embodied. This… this was new.'

'Do you know if this means there are more of them out there?' Kei waved towards the horizon, bobbing up and down in the distance between the blue sea and the even bluer sky. 'And not to be overly negative, but that _thing _\- just came right through your precious shield as though it wasn't there.'

'It isn't,' Yanez muttered, looking as though he'd just swallowed something nasty. 'Someone took it offline just before we were attacked…' At the news, Nero looked equally dyspeptic, and I didn't blame him. It meant someone else he knew was dead - murdered - and replaced by a doppelganger.

'You need to review your security protocols,' Hannibal informed him, which personally I felt was a little unfair, as well as stating the bloody obvious. I waded in.

'I've watched his people, Hannibal. The overlaps are well coordinated - no-one here's out of line of sight. Unless more than one person's been sequestrated and they're covering for each other, the most likely time for insertion would have been when you were on Heavy Meldar. Did you keep up your surveillance policy there?'

I could guess the answer, because Yanez looked sicker by the second. I felt for the guy, despite spending several days as his unwilling guest. No-one enjoys screwing up that badly. As a former poster boy for the trope, I sympathised.

Just a little..

'It's a waste of time indulging in recriminations,' I continued briskly. 'You've got a problem, and you need to find these things as fast as possible. I take it your ship's around here somewhere?'

Nero nodded. 'Underwater; there's a docking tube extended under the hall.'

I slapped him on the back. 'Right. Then I need two things - your nibelung, and a secure warp link to my ship.' I cut him off as he opened his mouth to protest - or thank me - I neither knew nor cared. 'You brought me here for my help? Then you're getting it. Or rather, you're getting Tochiro, because if there's anyone who can get you out of this, it's the little guy - and the rest of my brainiacs.'

He sent a pained look in Hannibal's direction. 'Who put him in charge?'

Hannibal gave him a shrug worthy of his brother's best I-don't-give-a-shit attitude. 'You did, when you brought him here, Khal. For fuck's sake - what did you expect?'

'That you'd be the one calling the shots?'

Hannibal - and I loved him for this - burst out laughing. 'Khal… seriously - do you think he just put on an eyepatch and a cloak and swans around playing pirate just for fun? He's _earned _the name, Khal. Men don't piss themselves at the mention of my _brother's _name - they piss themselves at the mention of _his _name. You wanted help - you've got it, god help you.'

I fell back to let Nero lead the way, his head lowered to talk to Yanez quietly as they walked. At my side, Kei nudged me in the ribs to get my attention. 'Why are we helping him?'

'Because if they were compromised on Heavy Meldar - and I'm betting that was the weak spot - what does that tell you?'

I waited longer than I expected for the credit chip to drop - she's usually faster than that. 'Oh. Oh, shit…'

'Precisely,' I muttered. 'Heavy Meldar's a moon in a system just outside our galaxy, so not patrolled much by the SDF, a growing centre for trade and transport, and one of our favourite stop-over points. A place we know and trust, so we let our guard down - witness the ease with which we were scooped up by these jokers.'

'You really think we've been infiltrated?' Hannibal asked. From the look on his face he didn't want to believe it. Hell - I wished I didn't.

'Think it? I know it,' I replied coldly. Not to be unfriendly, but because there was a growing ache in my heart at the knowledge. These things had almost twenty years head start on us. 'The _Arcadia's_ potentially the only thing that can stop what they've got planned. We're the only people - apart from maybe Layla Shura - who are working on the problem. Where would you strike?'

And the bit I didn't add, although I knew they'd both figure it out: how better to sow dissension and discord in your enemies, than to hide among them, wearing the face of a friend. We'd always known the nibelung could do it - we just figured it was too hard for them to suppress the real personality for long without technological help. But something that could kill, and then replicate a person - copy their memories, mimic them perfectly down to the cellular level… if that news got out, it could sow distrust amongst men far better than we could claim to be.

Kei nibbled on her bottom lip as we walked, a sure sign she was deep in thought. 'There's something else,' she said eventually, gaining the attention of both of us. 'Dark Matter is another relic from that universe, right? We have to assume it has something to do with whatever they are… what they can do?'

'A fair assumption,' Hannibal said quietly.

'So… just how dead do you have to be? Before they can… you know…'

It was reassuring to see Hannibal force his hand away from the grip of his pistol, as he stared hard at Nero's back, several yards in front of us. Had to love the old man's instincts. 'No. It's Khalsa, I'd stake…'

'Not Khalsa,' she said softly. She looked up at me, and I cursed inwardly for not seeing it myself. '_He_ came back. Twice. The Captain… but how would we know, Harlock? How would we _know_? How do we know what the dark matter has done to _us_? Yanez was looking at us to see how we react, but we've been who we are for a long time - so what would he see? Do we really know for sure we're us? The Captain says he can't remember what happens… where he is in between those times when he somehow comes back. What if _we_ can't rem…'

I shut her up with a finger to her lips. 'You always overthink things,' I told her gently. 'Stop borrowing trouble. We are who we are, Kei. And our crew are far too idiosyncratic, annoying, crazy and downright cranky to have been replaced by soulless replicas.'

'That covers Ali,' Hannibal drawled. 'What about the rest of them?' He fell in beside us, his long legs keeping pace with us easily, despite his age. It was hard to remember that he was only about fourteen years older than Harlock. Our former captain had been permanently "frozen" in his thirties - and had looked a good few years younger, something that ran in the family. Mamoru - _Hannibal _\- had been in his late forties, and the _Deathshadow Zero_ had been hit by far less dark matter than her bigger, deadlier sisters. He could pass for a young sixty-something, but it must suck, being in your sixties for the best part of a century… Hell, he'd been Hannibal for a lot longer than he'd been Mamoru Okita. _And we think _we've _got existential problems_…

'It won't be anyone close,' I murmured, more to myself than to them. 'But if it were me, I'd want someone close enough to be useful, not so close to the main players that they come under scrutiny.'

'Leopard?' Kei suggested. Since she absolutely despises him, I let that one pass. Besides, I had my suspicions that he was probably Nero's inside man.

'Closer,' I grunted. We were at the wooden hall by now, ducking under the sun-bleached arch of the front doorway. 'If it was my operation, I'd have replaced someone no-one would really notice.'

'Someone claiming to be a former artillery gunner, perhaps?' Kei asked archly. I didn't get a chance to retort as we reached an airlock - the covering wooden panel flipped back to reveal the smooth sides of a boarding tube leading down into the darkness, lit by a handful of glow-tubes placed along the wall at irregular intervals. With a hand resting on the hilt of the sabre - and for the life of me I had no idea what I thought I was going to do with the damn thing if things turned ugly - I followed Nero and his nimbler companion down into the belly of the beast, Kei's slim hand in mine.

* * *

I stepped out of the boarding tube into a twilight that made the Arcadia back in the days I'd first come aboard seem like bright daylight. I almost stumbled into Nero's broad, silk encased back because our host had stopped in the middle of the corridor.

'Did you forget to pay the utility bills?' I asked snarkily. But it was Yanez who called for the lights, and I had my first look at the interior of one of _Arcadia's _sisters that wasn't the victim of a nasty makeover.

The _Deathshadow Three_ \- I'd never known what its ill-fated captain had called her - had been a dark, dank, sepulchral temenos; crewed by the undead, her form, inside and out, reflecting her terrible fate. It wasn't a sight I ever wanted to see again.

My own ship… well, after a century or so of Tochiro playing around with her innards, her configuration wasn't exactly in the manual. But as we followed Nero along deserted, echoing corridors towards the bridge, I did notice a lot of similarities. Except…

It was more a sense of scale, I realised. The layouts, the designs were similar - almost identical, but it was as though the _Thunderbolt_ was more cramped. An odd sensation, because as far as I knew, the ships were the same draught. I asked Hannibal.

'It's the _Arcadia _that's changed,' he said softly, as though compelled to speak in an undertone. 'A lot of the internal architecture was removed and reconfigured to accommodate the central computer core Tochiro inhabits, along the central axis towards the stern. This was more how she was originally - more of a standard battleship layout. The moving walkways were also removed from _Arcadia_ at some point…'

I had been a little surprised to find I didn't need to do much walking. The central strip of the corridor was indeed a moving walkway, carrying us along at a slow but decent clip towards the bridge. The walkway was marked by yellow chevrons, which struck me as somewhat frivolous on such a dark ship. I felt rather silly standing there letting the machines do the work, if I was honest.

The bridge, when we arrived, was pleasantly familiar. And I do mean "pleasant". The design was mostly identical - a long gantry overlooking the main bridge crew stations below. Aft the massive arc of the dark matter generator spun overhead like a giant, gothic waterwheel, the blue glowing control orb sparking in front of it. Between the wheel and the dark matter generator was the captain's chair - a much less dramatic version than my own - less skeletal, no red leather for a start. A rather boring gunmetal black with a control panel to one side. Otherwise, the controls were mostly the same - navigation to one side, sensors to the other, wheel in the middle (sans skull decals, it looked rather ordinary, and a little out of place against the gleaming, more contemporary fittings surrounding it.) Oh - the walls were still adorned with the massive gears and pulleys that did... something or other impressive with the secondary turrets, or so I'd been told. There was a part of me that still thought they were just there to look cool. I walked towards the bow, taking in the design of the interior with more than a little interest. I couldn't have looked casually disinterested if I'd tried by this point. At the railing, I stopped, rested my hands on its cool metal, and looked out over the top elevation of the ship.

She was under several hundred feet of water - she'd have to be, to cover her so completely from keel to top of conning tower. Normally this should have been as black as space, but Yanez' command had also turned on the external lights, and I had a pretty good view over her top deck - and here the differences between _Thunderbolt _and _Arcadia _were the greatest.

I had of course gone up against their sister ship, and despite her condition, Number Three hadn't been that different from her original plans. _Thunderbolt's_ top lines however were spread out before me in all their original simplistic glory, and it was an impressive sight. At rest, her gun turrets were aligned facing her bow, and the sensation was how I'd imagined looking down on the deck of one of the old sea-faring battleships she'd been inspired by. Unlike the _Arcadia_, which sported a massive spinal column along her top spine, flanked by her smooth, grey-green surface which curved smoothly and fluidly to make her seem grown, rather than built, _Thunderbolt's_ lines were sleek and elegant, narrowing from the widest part of her midsection in the vicinity of her bridge, to a narrow bow. The lights were arranged in lines, currently glowing a brilliant white against her hull, making it look as though she were inlaid with shining circuitry. Occasionally blue flickers ran along her edges and across the viewscreen, following her lines with mathematical precision.

'She's in amazing condition.' Kei had quite naturally gravitated towards her station, and was running her hands over the controls. 'It's as though she came out of the dock yesterday…'

True enough. _Arcadia _was self repairing - mostly - but inside she did show the signs of hard living over the past hundred and twenty or so years. Jury-rigged repairs were the constant bane of Maji's and Yattaran's existence, and there was always some piece of kit with its innards hanging out, or a trip hazard that had never heard of an accident book.

'She was the first keel laid down,' Hannibal said, striding slowly over to my position, where he stood beside me, hands clasped behind his back, taking in the view. 'Normally Harlock would have taken her as his command, but Tochiro had had time to refine a few things by the time _Deathshadow Four_ was being completed. He ran a hand over the railing, and frowned. 'You're right though - she looks as good now as she did the first time I stepped aboard. I know she's only had one careful driver, Khal, but seriously - have you ever had this beast out for a spin lately?'

The tone and the question were light enough, but over the past few years I'd come to know the man fairly well. A tendency to lead with a seemingly frivolous or innocuous question to encourage someone to unburden was one of his stock of tricks. I watched Nero surreptitiously to see how he responded, because I did have a theory of my own.

'She's a hell of a pain to get ready to sail.' Yanez, again, speaking for his friend and captain. 'There's not much we face we can't deal with using the rest of the fleet.'

'If you're relying on that relic you brought us here in,' Hannibal replied drily, 'I'm amazed you've survived this long…'

I waited, my eyes still on Nero, who stood next to the captain's chair, one hand resting lightly on the high back, but making no move to sit in it, or to move to the helm. If I had to make a guess, from the expression on his face, this was a man who'd rather be standing in front of a firing squad than where he was right now. I'd have made a decent case for suggesting he was only a moment's lapse of control away from bolting off the bridge, if not the bloody ship. For a man who gave off the impression of so much strength and virility, it was something of a shock.

...and also rather humbling. I caught Hannibal's eye, and walked casually over to our host. 'Captain…' He looked up, and smiled grimly. 'These ships…' I continued quietly. 'They're amazing… but one hell of a burden. And not the sort of thing you can hand over easily to someone else.'

He ran a hand over the polished metal of the chair, his hand coming to rest on the control panel on the armrest. 'I started out in Intel and Security. Did you know that?' I shook my head. I'd had my start in a similar capacity, so I had a pretty good idea where this would go. 'After Tiamat… El Alamein… Beta Orionis... we lost a massive number of experienced captains and four admirals. The Admiral here - ' he nodded in Hannibal's direction - 'put me forward for promotion within his fleet. We were Solar System based - mostly logistics, and it wasn't so bad. Not until the first waves finally breached the Pluto Defense line.'

I nodded my understanding. Calling it a "line" is a bit misleading - technically it's more of an arbitrary bubble around the system, between the orbit of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt; a massive network of manned listening posts and weapons platforms, supported by the Outer System - now the _only _System, since the whole Mars debacle - Fleet.

I'd heard reports, both in History classes (heavily redacted, I'd found out years later) and first hand accounts - mostly from Tochiro, or via Harlock's logs. The waves of ships heading for Earth had been huge - thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ships, large and small. And without any discrimination at all between civilian, unarmed transports and military vessels, the Alliance Fleet had massacred the lot, taking heavy casualties in the process.

Nero's eyes told the story even more eloquently that his voice could, and his throat was working overtime to try and get that voice out. I laid a hand on his shoulder. 'I do get it,' I told him. 'We've all seen - and done - terrible things in battle…'

He looked over at Hannibal, and for a moment I saw that same terrible void in his eyes that I saw in Nero's. 'Not like this,' Hannibal said hoarsely. 'Dear God, Harlock, not like this…'

There was a reason those first hand reminiscences didn't come from the living eyewitnesses.

'We'd not long launched the Deathshadow Fleet,' Nero continued. 'The First Wave was their trial by fire… we were originally held back, in support - the Admiralty didn't want to tip their hand so early on…'

'They were outnumbered, and panicked,' Hannibal took up the narrative in his usual calm manner. 'My Fleet Admiral - Sanada - overruled the decision and had them advance to the front line. None of the captains had ever flown anything like them before - the space trials hadn't even been fully completed, so they'd not even fired the main turrets outside of simulation. The captain of _Deathshadow Three _was killed in the first sally - went out alone to protect the Pluto Forward Base and got himself and half his crew killed doing it.'

'The ships were self-repairing,' Nero added bleakly. 'The crew… not so much.' He glanced again at Hannibal. 'The first time we opened fire with those new cannon… it was like something out of legends: _Brahmastra… _weapons capable of destroying whole worlds. Ships fragmented under just the first barrage, and they were so frail they didn't even slow the beams down - one barrage would just keep on going; there wasn't enough mass to stop them… I wasn't sure they _would _stop when I watched it. Just four ships, in a lethal dance, as though we were the _nataraja _incarnate: Shiva dancing the world into ruin.' He shuddered.

Knowing all too well the lethal effectiveness of the _Arcadia's_ main guns, I kept silent. They could go through most normal ships like a cheesewire through butter, and I could still see the way they'd cut through my brother's fleet almost twenty years ago, taking out over ninety percent of the Gaia Fleet's finest in less than ten minutes. And that was _one _ship.

Somedays, I really wish I didn't have such an active imagination.

'Most of those ships were unarmed,' Nero continued. 'Just desperate people tricked into folly. Sold the promise of a fresh start on our only real home. And we slaughtered them by the millions in that so-called battle. They kept throwing themselves at us as though they thought that if they kept coming, we'd eventually wear ourselves out. They had no idea what they were up against - how could they? We didn't really appreciate what we were flying until then. Because the Deathshadow Fleet didn't need to refuel. It didn't need to stop for repairs. We could pull back, regroup, let the hulls heal and head straight back into the fight. Even if they took eighty to ninety percent casualties, the AIs kept the systems going. You could fly the damned things with a crew of about six if you had to, as long as the nibelung kept the dark matter engines running.'

'Kodai did, when he made that suicide run near Pluto,' Hannibal muttered. 'Brave, stupid fool…'

Nero's reply was a wry, twisted smile. 'Things might have gone down differently later if he'd lived. His kid brother wasn't the best choice for a replacement…'

'He was the best I could find, from a very small pool of candidates,' Hannibal replied flatly. 'I can't second-guess my choices now. Besides - Phantom approved the selection.'

_Well that should have warned you_… Wisely I kept that sentiment to myself. I kept my attention on Nero. 'You don't want to fly this ship, do you?' I asked softly. 'It terrifies you…'

Hannibal gave me a sharp look, echoed by Yanez, but neither spoke. Nero, miserable under his stern exterior, nodded.

'What would I use it for, unless as a weapon of terror? When we were cast out of hell, thrown clear of the maelstrom, it was a long time before I regained my sense of self. In that time… we did fight, when attacked. And we did terrible things, this ship and I…' His fingers clamped around the armrest, his knuckles showing white through his dark skin, until I expected the metal to crumple. 'At first, I didn't care. Later… with time to heal, and reflect.' He looked over to Yanez with a rare, gentle smile, 'with friends who could talk some sense into me, I came to realise it was too powerful to play with so cavalierly. A sledgehammer to crack a walnut, as the old saying goes. I came back to myself, and in the process, realised I didn't much like who I was when I'm at the helm of this ship. Power corrupts, and this kind of power…'

He looked me straight in the eye, as if trying to see behind the facade, to whatever lay behind my skull. 'You can't just walk away from these ships. They're a part of us, forever.'

'Harlock called it a curse,' Kei said sadly.

Nero's reply was unsurprisingly blunt. 'He was right. Even if I walked away, I couldn't let it fall into the wrong hands. It gets inside your head… whispering… changes you in ways you never thought possible. The kind of man - or woman - who can stand at the helm of one of these ships without going mad is a rare thing. I'm amazed Harlock managed it. He must have seen something in you… the right kind of strength, to take this on.'

I thought back to the moment Harlock had made his decision, so long ago. That moment he'd lifted his gravity sabre from pointing at my face and let out that tiny little huff of amusement. Because I hadn't walked away from the people I'd handed over to be executed? Because I was the kind of man who'd always look for a better solution? Because I'd been adamant that no matter how bad things got, I wouldn't resort to pushing a button on that damned detonator…?

I suspected if the moment was recreated, knowing what I did now I'd have blown his fucking head off and walked off the bloody ship to give myself up…

Except… I looked over to where Kei stood, her bottom resting on the edge of the console to my left, her fingers drumming idly on the edge as she watched us warily. Imagined a future without _her_...

No… I really _was _that much of a sucker. I'd do it all again, regardless.

No wonder he'd laughed.

But I couldn't take all the credit: 'I had help,' I replied softly. 'So did he. Tochiro was merged with the Central Computer Core. He can - did - talk to Harlock all the time. Never bloody shuts up, to be honest. But you're right. It's a struggle. It's all too easy to just let rip, and solve your problems by force, when there are so few personal consequences to doing so. These ships make it so easy to feel like a god.'

He nodded his understanding, but Kei was staring at me as though I'd just grown two heads. 'I knew it was hard, but you've never said…'

'I never wanted you to know,' I replied sadly. 'You've always borne so much for my sake, I felt I could keep this one off your shoulders.'

'Idiot,' she accused.

'Guilty as charged,' I replied fondly. She rolled her eyes at me and leaned back a little more against the console with a heavy sigh. Even Hannibal was looking at me with rather more approval that I usually saw. I gave my attention back to Nero. 'You didn't walk away, you didn't destroy the ship or yourself, and you're standing here now - somewhere I get that you'd rather not be - because I suspect you know damn well you're going to have to take her out sooner rather than later. That takes balls of steel. ' I took a deep breath. 'You might have gone looking for old friends, and I have to say you've got a damned peculiar way of making new ones, but you might now have a better chance than the one you went looking for. Now - where's my warp link? The sooner I contact my ship, the faster we can get some checks started. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want to let your crew on board until I'm happy there aren't any ringers in the group…'

Yanez led me to the communications room, located as ours was, below the front end of the upper bridge. Locating the _Arcadia's _beacon took a few minutes, but not as long as I'd thought.

I'd expected her to be on her way, so her replying so quickly wasn't the surprise. Being answered by Selen however… now _that _was more of an eye-opener.

Blaze's news about three incoming Phantasma was something I could have done without.

The news that the _Miranda _and the _Arcadia _were only about six and twelve hours away respectively was better.

I decided not to tell Kei straight away that Mamoru and Freya were on board the former: I figured I'd let Blaze have the pleasure of explaining _that _one...


	9. Chapter 8

_**Dedicated to the memory of Makio Inoue, the VA who to so many of us will always be THE voice of Harlock, who sadly passed away November 29 2019. **_

_**遠く時の輪の接する所で, また 会う**_

* * *

_**Arcadia**_

Yattaran spared a brief glance over to the captain's chair, where their substitute was exchanging tablets with Rick, and lifted his striped t-shirt in a vain attempt to clean his thick lensed glasses. 'Bugger me backwards,' he muttered, just loud enough to be heard by Franz, the mustachioed pirate standing at Kei's usual station. 'Who'd ever think we'd end up with a girl captain?'

Franz shot a look back over his right shoulder, to where Selen was pushing Harlock's bird's beak out of her face gently, rubbing its head when it gave a little _prrrk_ of annoyance. 'Bloody hell, Yattaran - you're such a dinosaur. You don't call a hottie like that a "girl" - it's disrespectful,' he whispered across the divide.

'S'not right, is what it is…' Yattaran's large hands fiddled with the controls on his console. 'Girl can't be Captain Harlock. Goes against all sortsa stuff…'

'But she _isn't_, is she? We aren't pulling that shit anymore pretending the captain's still on board? We're going to _rescue _the captain and Kei. And that's a sodding princess you're dissin', first mate. _And _the Boss of the Millennial Thieves…Kei would smack you senseless for this shit - and I thought you _liked_ Miss Selen?'

'I do, but just…'

'Not when I'm sitting in your captain's chair?'

Selen had moved silently to stand behind Yattaran, who jumped far higher than anyone would have expected from a man of his girth. Across the bridge gantry, Franz sniggered. 'Man… your face!'

'Piss off.'

'Gentlemen!'

'Who? Us?' Yattaran belched and reached round his large girth to scratch his left ass cheek. 'Sorry ma'am. No gentlemen here and that's the sad, sorry truth…'

Selen sighed, and caught Franz's eye. The pirate - tall, dark haired with a luxuriant moustache he tended to stroke when he was nervous - rather like now - just rolled his eyes. 'Ignore him,' he advised. 'The rest of us do.' He glared at the first mate. 'You know… there's not really much going on whilst we're in IN-SKIP. Don't you have some plastic to glue to your cock or something?'

'That was my _fingers_, one time when Ali fucked with my stuff, you bastard, and anyways, gotta stay on top of you lot, haven't I?' Yattaran growled at him. 'With both the Captain and Kei away…'

'We'll get them back, first mate,' Selen assured him. 'A few more hours and we'll be in orbit around that planet.'

'Ventimiglia, huh?' Franz tapped in the name into the console. 'It's a no-man's land, literally. A mostly water world on the edge of M31, in the sweet zone by a margin - tropical temperatures all year round and that's in the temperate zone. Oceans are a little too salty and warm for most terrestrial life, apart from some archaea, so the suiseijin didn't want it. A beach bum's paradise…'

'One smaller planetoid in an inner orbit, one gas giant with no habitable moons, a few straggling comets from a small oort cloud all wrapped up in a sesame seed bun,' Martinez sang out as he staggered up the stairs under the weight of a large tray. 'Some of us do our homework. Coffee run!'

'Esteban, I might just grab you and snog you right here,' Franz told him with a grin.

'Just take your damned coffee and keep your hands and your lips to yourself, ferretface,' Martinez replied with a grin. 'Miss Selen? First mate?'

Selen passed, with a smile. Yattaran took one of the insulated mugs then scowled at the tray. 'No donuts?'

'Ran out of the ready prepped stuff yesterday and no one knows how to work the machine with Anita off on the _Miranda_.'

Selen placed a commiserating hand on Yattaran's broad, fleshy shoulder. 'I can work it. In fact, I need something to do that isn't sitting here watching nothing but your backsides. I might as well make myself useful. The ship pretty much runs itself. Yattaran - if you need me I'll be in with Tochiro for a little while, then the kitchens.'

Franz and Martinez both stared openly and admiringly as she strode towards the stairs. Tall, slender and athletic, her black flight suit was relieved only by the tan leather shoulder holster she wore, and her auburn hair had grown out from a severe cut a few years ago to sweep against the base of her spine.

'She sure is prettier than the captain,' Franz mused. 'I could stare at that ass and that rack all day… But I never get why a princess and a big shot rebel leader like her is so happy to just run a takeaway on the arse end of nowhere, or roll her sleeves up in our kitchen.'

'It ain't about being happy,' Yattaran said bleakly. 'She ain't been happy since Zero died. Sometimes you just have to find something that fills the hole… and keeps you from either going off the rails or stickin' a bucket on yer head an' screamin' out loud.'

Martinez and Franz both stared at him as though he'd suddenly sprouted a second head. 'When did you get so philosophical, first mate?' Martinez asked eventually.

Yattaran shrugged and scratched his navel, the movement sending shockwaves through his enormous belly. 'Saw it with the captain and Kei back when he first took the helm. Those two kids were clinging to each other like they'd found the only spar after a shipwreck to start with. Everyone of us has something we cling to. Ain't always smart. Ain't always comprehensible to anyone else, but we all have it.' He glanced back to where the captain's bird was grooming its feathers on the back of the throne. 'Even that daft thing. I make models. Maji spends most of his waking hours in that work room - and a lot of his sleeping ones come to that. Luna's got a bottle, her cats and Ali and I still ain't sure which order that's in.' He smirked. 'Cap'n has his hothouses in his off time, Kei has her clipboard, and they have each other _and _their spawn. Her Highness now… if she didn't have her kids and looking after waifs and strays on Tabito, I'd be real worried.'

'That mad bitch of a sister of hers had kids, and a guy who by all accounts would have died for her… still went batshit insane and wanted to rule the universe even _before _she got meched,' Franz opined.

'Kind of my point. If she'd stuck with running a little bitty ramen shop in the middle of nowhere, she wouldn't have turned into a murdering mad cow,' Yattaran pointed out triumphantly. 'Q.E.D. Also: Exhibit two - Captain's brother? Admiral, virgin, homicidal cunt.'

'And our old captain? You think if he'd had a hobby he might not have tried to reboot the universe?' Franz asked.

'Well he did have his liquor cabinet, but it might have helped if he'd gotten laid every once in a while,' Yattaran finished with a smirk.

Martinez sniggered. 'So should we be worried, first mate? What with Anita swanning off on the _Miranda…_?'

'Well if I start making a play for ruler of the universe, I guess you'll find out, won't ya?' Yattaran grinned nastily. 'And if you two jokers have fuck all better to do, take over here, will ya? I'm off. Got a hot date with this sweet little number the Captain found in this junk shop last month… still on the sprues an' _everything_…'

He stomped off, whistling out of tune with only a vague attempt at a melody.

'Captain spoils him,' Franz sniggered.

'Captain _bribes_ him coz the lazy bastard won't get out of bed for anything less than the end of the world otherwise,' Martinez replied with a matching snigger. 'Oi! Shiro! Rookie! Get your behind up here and grab the coffees for me will ya? I need to take Yattaran's watch!'

A boyish tenor floated back up carrying a "coming, sir!' Martinez smirked.

'_Sir_… gotta love it. These newbies are so cute.'

Franz chuckled. 'Remember when Ali came on board?'

'Must I? The bastard bled all over me, Bob, Carlos, the shuttle, _and _The Captain, blacked The Captain's eye, and didn't stop bitching for a month.'

'Ali's _never _stopped bitching... '

'Maybe that's _his _thing?'

They both laughed, startling the kid - no more than about twenty - who'd dutifully trotted up the stairs. Martinez handed him the tray, then hearing voices below, leaned over the railing with a slight frown.

'Whassup?' Franz asked as his friend straightened and took up his station again. Between them the ship's wheel moved idly from clockwise to counter as though held in unseen hands.

'Just Cai loitering with Doscoi - had their heads together, gave me a bit of a weird look when they saw me and then hustled before the coffee got there. Just seemed a bit odd - I mean Doscoi's a surly fucker who doesn't even give the rest of the engineers the time of day except when there's work to do, and he can be a bit of a twat about the guy-on-guy thing, so _him _being unfriendly I expect. But Cai…'

'Be fair, Esteban - since Matt died, he's been breathing on one lung. I mean, that's a guy who _really _needs to get out more, is our Cai. Poor bastard. Those two were joined at the hip…' He pulled a face. 'I mean, yeah, they _were _but… That came out wrong.'

'Idiot. And yeah, I know. But even for Cai he's been quiet the past few months. I mean - he'd give the old captain a run for his money in the laconic, withdrawn and please-leave-me-alone department.'

Franz snorted. 'The Captain would never have said "please".'

'Missing the point much?' Martinez ran a hand over the latest pattern in his buzzcut - this time a skull and crossbones shaved into the side of his head.

'You're getting twitchy because a couple of the crew are being friendly?' Franz stroked his moustache, twiddling with the longer ends idly. 'Except... Old Grumpy Pants and the Lost Leonore? Granted, that's odd even for this bunch.' He shrugged. 'Still, you never know where true love will strike…'

Martinez snorted his coffee all over Yattaran's console and tried to mop up the mess frantically with the hem of his sweater whilst simultaneously trying to avoid choking with a coughing fit. 'Fuck's sake, Franz - I did _not _need that image! Bloody hell… I need brain bleach…'

'Sorry mate, we're all out,' Franz told him with a cheeky grin. 'And if that freaks you out, you _really _don't need to hear what I found Yatts and Anita doing the other day, in one of the…'

'You're right, I don't.'

'But I gotta tell _someone…'_

'Not me.'

'I was _trying _to mind my own bus…'

'Which bit of "not me" did you not get?'

'You're _here_…'

'Not listening.'

'He had his…'

'Will you for the love of everything just _stop…_?'

'Hell no… this is way too much fun!'

'Piss off.'

Franz's gleeful cackle echoed around the bridge. On the main floor, Rick turned to the man standing at the station to his right. 'I thought we'd left Ali back on the _Miranda…_?' he muttered, loud enough to carry.

Franz leaned over the railing. 'Oi! You can go off people you know!'

'I,' Rick muttered, 'Should be so lucky…'

* * *

In the Central Computer room, a deep throaty chuckle emanated from the speaker on the far side of the main computer banks, next to where Selen stood, her arms folded across her chest, staring at the glowing circular light that whirled round and around in the centre of the tree-like structure that soared for the best part of a hundred feet or more above her into the vaulted, cathedral-like dome of the room.

'Something amusing?' she asked. She changed her mind about standing, and sat down on the structure leading from the machine across the floor that resembled a massive tree root.

_Just the crew being idiots. But it's fun to listen in most days. Kind of like one of those daytime vids, only with more profanity, nudity and sex._

'Just please don't show me any examples,' she pleaded with a husky laugh. 'There are some sights no-one should ever see…'

_Funny, that's what Martinez was saying. Except Franz is yanking his chain and there was a plastic model involved… T_ochiro paused and giggled. _That came out wrong…_

'You don't say…' she drawled. 'Did you take a look at Harlock's request?'

_Ummm. Kind of a tough one, without a sample. I mean killing these things is one thing - I can get Maji and Doscoi to beef up the specs on the M78s - hell, we could have gone production on the cosmo dragoons years ago, but that's a lot of weapon to make so free with - I didn't fancy them falling into the wrong hands…_

Selen's hand went up to the butt of her model - like the new Arcadia's standard sidearms, a version of the ancient Nambu type 14, complete with the horizontal ridging on the grip. 'You don't trust the crew?'

_My lovely, adorable Selen, have you seen how much lost kit we get? Only takes one careless cock up or a trip to a casino and you have to knock heads together. But I guess if we only break 'em out for emergencies, I can talk Maji into counting' 'em all back in… that is his job, after all._

'And the other problem?'

_Ah. Well. That, as I said, is the tough part_. Tochiro's hologramme rippled into existence at her side and he sat beside her companionably. 'We don't know that much about the metanoids. Mimay doesn't know much - that was her brother's schtick…'

'The archaeologist?'

'Uh-huh. Poor bastard. Fancy having some alien creep stuff you into a box in your own brain and walk around wearing your body like a sock puppet.' He shuddered. 'Fate worse than death if you ask me, staring out through your own eyes, screaming inside where no-one will hear you…' He pulled a face and continued. 'Anyway. Harlock described something that reminded me more of a kind of something I once saw in a text back on Niflheim, when we first met Mimay's people. I think it was Maer who read it to me, though she stopped when Gullveig got nasty about it. Anyway. It was something about non-localised phenomena - their big mistake was in trying to communicate with these things - they were kind of like dark matter life forms or something - back in the universe the nibelung come from. They built them bodies, and that's when it all went a bit wrong…'

Selen frowned slightly. 'I do recall some talk, back when my sister first started her culling…'

The hologramme nodded enthusiastically. 'Yep. Me too. Something about mistakes repeating…' He sighed. 'How the hell do you look for a dark matter contamination in a group of people already riddled with the stuff from day to day exposure? Or in the case of Harlock and Hannibal, a massive dose or three from walking around on Earth or being caught in Phantom's Folly?' He scratched at his non existent left armpit with an equally existentially challenged finger. 'Poser, this one. But there must be some way to look for them.'

'The odd behaviour he mentioned?'

He just _looked _at her through his thick glasses. 'On _this _ship?'

She laughed. 'Good point.' She tilted her head slightly in thought. 'Tochiro… thinking of poor Alberich… why don't you put a call through to Oedo's team on Niflheim? Daiba's still working on that dig, isn't he? Maybe our new nibelung friends might be able to help? They were linked into the nibelung equivalent of a computer network, weren't they? Maybe one of them might know something?'

'I was already sending a few questions through to Freya… but I'll drop them a line. Might give old Oedo a heads-up as well. If this is something from the nibelung's distant past come back to haunt us, maybe he can target his efforts a bit more.'

'Thank you.' Selen looked up and around. 'No Mimay today?'

'Said she had something to look for, down in stores. Not sure what, but she was digging around in mine and Harlock's old stuff. I'll tell her you want her?'

She nodded and stood up gracefully. 'Please.' She sighed. 'I just wish I could believe that whatever those two have fallen into is just normal trouble. Just this once…'

'Kei and Harlock?'

'_Hannibal _and Harlock. You'd think at his age he'd have more sense.'

Tochiro's hologramme vanished in a shower of 3-D pixels, accompanied by manic giggles, his wide grin the last thing to disappear. She left the computer room with his peals of laughter still ringing in her ears.

Inside the confines of the crystalline lattices that made up the heart of the _Arcadia's_ massive neural net, Tochiro chuckled to himself over Selen's comment. 'Mamoru? The big boy scout? Not a chance…' His consciousness splintered into multiple locations as he applied himself to an equal multitude of tasks. Thankfully there was enough of him to go round. _Unlike the early days, right, Harlock? Huh. And there I go again, talking to you as though you were there… but maybe you are? Maybe it's like a coma patient, and you can hear me? Remember those days? I had to keep shoving against the AI, but every time I took some more space up, I had to compensate by taking over that task. Good job I could always multitask with the best… And I'm ornery as all hell. _

He isolated a portion of his awareness, and put it to work on the specifications for the M78s and the rest of the armoury. _Shoulda done this years ago… but hell, we didn't think it would matter, did we? If you're going to change the world an' all_… He split off another portion, this time to look through the cameras that dotted the ship. _Doscoi, huh? Sullen bugger, makes you look like a right little ray of sunshine, my friend. Brilliant at what he does, mind you - a practical engineer, not a theoretician. Lights up when you give him a puzzle to solve. Kind of guy I used to love working with back when. But… the kid says these things can't do empathy, so I have to check - though on this ship we kind of get the high-functioning end of that curve as standard… _

_Cai though_… He watched the footage with an electromagnetic frown. _Maybe he's still moping? Poor guy had his heart torn out when Matt bought it during the plague - and boy am I glad you missed that one… Okay. Split screen, remove non-surviving crew and anyone no longer part of the team. Don't want to start too close to the plague, or during the Machinners War - too many false positives. Let's start with just after the Mazone fiasco: run facial emotive recognition software, shall we, then go on to voice stress analysis._

Humming to himself, he got to work.

* * *

_**Miranda**_

'What I never get is how come it can take weeks to travel across our own galaxy,' Ali remarked from somewhere above Blaze's left ear, 'but just a few days _between_ galaxies…'

Mamoru looked over his shoulder from his seat at navigation, where one of the crew was showing him the calculations. 'How long have you been on board spaceships?' he asked, rolling his eyes.

'Too bloody long. But I'm a passenger, me. And this is only the third time I've done an intergalactic hop. So it's a genuine question, smarty-pants. It's weird.'

'It's physics,' Freya said glibly. 'I could show you…'

Mamoru patted her hand where it rested on the console next to his, as she was standing watching his workings. 'Don't, Freya. He gets easily confused with the big words. It's easy: remember the time you fell off one of the draught horses while we were clearing up from when the dam overflowed?'

Rei cackled. 'Oh boy… right in it, you were. Took two horses on ropes to pull you out…'

Ali gave the boys a sour look. 'Yeah… who was it blew Takuma's trumpet in her ear?'

Both affected innocent looks. Mamoru eventually grinned. 'Anyway,' he continued smoothly, 'moving in Imaginary Number space in a galaxy is like moving through mud. All those gravity wells… all that mass… it takes a lot of power because the brane is under so much strain in those conditions.'

'So's mine,' Ali muttered.

'His what is what?' Freya whispered to Mamoru.

'Brain, strain,' he whispered back. 'He's trying to be witty, but puns are the last resort of a deranged mind… Ow!' He glared at Ali, who smirked smugly at him, having smacked the back of his head. 'You do know I'll tell mom you assaulted me, right?'

The crewman leaning over Mamoru's other shoulder raised an eyebrow. 'Not your father?'

'You're new, aren't you?' Ali asked. 'See, his dad'll just sigh and tell him to watch his smart mouth, and tell him to sort out his own problems. Kei on the other hand…' he shuddered theatrically. 'I'll just tell your dad you were mean to me.'

'Ali - I'm _fifteen_. What's your excuse for hiding behind dad?' He stuck his tongue out 'Anyway, the space between galaxies is devoid of that kind of gravity-distorting mass, so it's more like moving through water. It's easier, so it's faster. Now if you immerse more deeply into sub-space, you can move faster because you get below the distortion of space-time - think of it like snorkeling below the waves during a storm - the further below the surface, the calmer the waters. But that takes more energy, which is harder to maintain - kind of like not having enough ballast, so you work harder to stay under, and then you take all that energy with you to travel that deep, which itself distorts space-time around you…' He smirked, as Ali's eyes glazed over. 'But it's also faster for us than normal ships because - drumroll - most of that "empty" space is dark matter, and we get through that like candy, so for us _that _space is like moving through air. We sprint whilst everyone else is trudging along behind us.' He beamed, at least until Freya sighed at him. 'What?'

'It's a little more complicated than that,' she chided him.

'But close enough for the peanut gallery?' Mamoru replied chirpily, ducking another wafted hand to the back of his head.

'Get Yattaran to demonstrate it with a rubber sheet, a couple of scale models, a _lot_ of ballbearings and a bathtub,' Rei advised Ali. 'It made more sense then.'

Mamoru sniffed disdainfully and ignored them. In the captain's seat, Blaze smiled at the banter. The Miranda's crew were mostly used to the _Arcadia's_ more lax discipline by now, but it still occasioned bewildered glances between them when there were any crossovers.

'Ali had better start watching his step with that one,' Anita said gruffly from near his shoulder. 'That kid's getting bigger, stronger and meaner in the dojo, and he fights as dirty and hard as both his parents. Ali's going down hard one day soon.'

Blaze looked up into her wide, freckled face. Anita was a tall woman; big and fleshy but not all of her bulk was fat - she still had a fair amount of muscle on her large frame. 'Professional opinion?' he asked quietly. The group around Mamoru was busy arguing over each other, so there was little chance of being overheard.

'Hell yes. _I'd _sign him up in a heartbeat - he's fast, strong, smart... ' she sighed.

'But hasn't got a prayer of a career in the military,' he finished for her. 'Not with that eye, and the lasting damage from the plague.'

'His stamina will always be an issue,' she said sadly. 'And no, they won't take him with that eye. Which is bloody stupid because he can run rings around any two-eyed pilot. Even Rick says he's got a natural talent, and it doesn't slow him down any, in a modern cockpit. It's a crock, is what it is. A damned waste.'

'Kei and Harlock might disagree.'

'It is what it is, Blaze. Thing is a boy like that needs an outlet. Too much energy and drive in one place. But Oedo's put out some feelers. He's keen to get the lad to sign on to the Pathfinders.'

Blaze glanced away from her and back to the boys, Ali and Freya, laughing around the nav console at something. 'Would it be enough to keep him occupied?'

'The other option is outlaw, and Kei and the captain don't want that. Wataru's keen on going all in with the SDF, and that's a whole other ball of trouble,' she continued.

Blaze regarded the small group with shadowed eyes. The nibelung, the android and the son of an outlaw… Outsiders all, but as close as siblings. The only one missing from their small group was Taro, Harlock and Kei's adopted son - an Oyama born and bred, and possessed of the family smarts in generous measure. 'Can't help thinking I really should have left them behind,' he muttered.

Anita patted his shoulder, gently for her, but hard enough to flatten a lot of men. 'Won't work with that lot. They all think they have something to prove - might as well be there to guide 'em, is my view.' She smiled fondly at the group. 'Handsome lot, aren't they? And way smart. Can't wait to see what trouble they get into when they're grown.' She chuckled.

'From a distance?' Blaze asked.

'Now you're getting it.'

_Attention. Ship exiting IN-SKIP. Dropping delta-V on pre-planned schedule. Estimate arrival in orbit around the target planet in twenty Earth standard minutes. _The voice of the ship's AI was female with a slight accent and a vibrato that in life Blaze suspected would have plugged straight into the libido of any man with a pulse. It certainly made the announcements a lot more entertaining than the clipped mechanical tones of most ships. _We tested some advanced voice print software_, Hannibal had explained when he'd asked. _There are several test prints in the ship's computers._ _I… prefer this one_. Blaze had to agree. Whoever had provided the print had a voice like liquid honey, and he only hoped it hadn't belonged to someone's grandmother making a few credits on the side...

'Takes longer to slow down than it does to get here,' Ali was muttering.

'Hardly,' Rei snorted. 'You do exaggerate…'

'Do not.'

'Do so - really, do you want me to list all the times I can remember? Because: eidetic memory.'

'Piss off.'

Rei sneered down his long thin nose at him. 'Ahhh… the perennial refuge in profanity of the average pirate…'

'Double piss off with knobs on.' Then with an evil smirk, just before Rei could make another smart-arsed reply, Ali added: 'Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo_**.'**_

Mamoru spluttered and stared at him wide eyed: 'Ali!'

Rei nudged him in the ribs. 'Is that one of those old Earth languages? What the hell does that mean?'

'Latin,' Mamoru replied absently, still staring at Ali in something between shock and awe. 'Trust you to go nuclear on your profanity just to show off. Catallus, Carmen 16? And I'm _not _translating _that _in public.'

Ali sniggered. 'Reading your dad's collection of filthy Roman poetry again?'

'It's not intended to be filthy in _context_…' Mamoru replied loftily.

Ali sniggered again. 'Opinions vary,' he replied airily. He turned to Blaze, who was doing his best to look as though he was completely unconcerned by the chatter, and as usual failing miserably. 'Thought about how you're going to explain the appearance of this joker to his mom, when we land?' he asked with a smirk.

Blaze smirked back. 'Actually, since you were his self-appointed guardian,' he replied lightly, 'I rather thought you could do that…'

'Wait… what?' Ali spluttered. Rei patted him on the back.

'There there, Ali. I'm sure she'll have far more important things to worry about that just who to blame for the fact Mamoru's out here… on the front lines… instead of tucked up safe and sound on Tabito.'

'Don't get cocky,' Blaze advised him. 'Mom's on her way here onboard the _Arcadia_, and when we spoke, she didn't look too happy about _your _presence on board, little brother.'

'And _I _should be the one of us worrying why?'

Blaze grinned at him. 'Oh. Because the little boy lost routine never worked on her even when you could pull it off, kiddo? And Mamoru - I wouldn't look so smug. I rather think your little boy privileges are shortly to be a thing of the past.' He stood up and stretched. 'Our days of taking the shit for your shenanigans are over, children. Welcome to the wonderful world of adulthood. You wanted the adventure - now you're going to have to pay the price…' He high-fived Ali on his way off the bridge, leaving the two youngsters staring at each other gloomily, and Freya smiling enigmatically in a manner that would have done credit to Mimay.

Ali followed in Blaze's wake. 'She's still gonna tear a strip off me,' he muttered gloomily. 'Just because.'

'Chin up. It can't be worse than some of the things mom said to me on the subject,' Blaze replied. 'My only consolation is that that pair will finally feel what it's like to be on the receiving end of it with the gloves off at long last.' He slapped Ali on the shoulder. 'Prep the shuttle will you? You, me, Anita and the Terrible Trio back there.'

Ali stopped and stared at him. 'You're taking them down..?'

'You prefer I leave them in orbit?'

Ali pulled a face. 'Yeah. Good point. You know what? Times like these, I'm so glad I ain't got kids myself…'

'Ali - we're _all _glad you haven't got kids,' Blaze replied drily.

'Everyone says that…' Ali muttered as they stood on the moving walkway. 'Can't think why…'

Blaze decided there was no chance in hell he could answer that with a straight face, and concentrated on the report on the tablet in his hand instead.


	10. Chapter 9

**_Thunderbolt_**

I took a slow walk back from the comms suite, so lost in thought I tripped over a snaking cable that trailed down the stairs and off down the corridor leading to the boarding tube we'd come down earlier. At the top of the stairs it headed in the direction of the dark matter engine, where Yngwie was standing in front of the controller, his hands roaming back and forth across the surface of the glowing control orb as though conducting music only he could hear.

It must have been a stormy symphony, because despite the ship being powered down, the circular rings of the machine were in motion and the orb itself glowing incandescently under his pale hands.

'Harlock?' Kei moved to my side, and wrapped an arm around my waist. 'What is it?'

'Maybe nothing… but if we're not moving - what the hell is that powering?' I kept my voice down but those pointy ears twitched anyway and we were on the receiving end of a blank eyed stare - though given the nibelung facial structure, it could just have been a hiccup.

'You're right, it's odd,' she murmured as we waited for the rest of them to join us behind the captain's chair. 'And it's not the only thing. Have you noticed the crew?'

'That oddly narrow demographic? Same as on the island. A handful of older men and women, the rest all in their mid-twenties? Then a drop to late teens. I'd estimate a five year gap between groups. It isn't natural…'

'Save it for later,' she whispered as our hosts and Hannibal drew closer. 'Let it play out for a little longer.'

I agreed. But not for too much longer. If I hadn't dragged the full story out of our hosts by the time the Miranda and Arcadia were in orbit, I was going to have to get a little more insistent…

* * *

Blaze's news meant a hasty convening in the _Thunderbolt's_ war room, one of the few parts of the ship I'd seen so far that looked like our own version. Unlike ours, it was still quite shiny, the chairs still had their upholstery and rolled nicely on their bases without sticky bits and squeaks. Most of the displays and controls on the holo-desk still worked, it wasn't chipped around the edges and didn't have coffee rings on it. Even the flooring was still springy and free of a century's worth of booted feet tearing chunks out of it, and there was no blast damage on the walls.

'Our screen's bigger,' I muttered into Kei's ear. She elbowed me in the stomach.

'Sssh. Behave,' she hissed back. 'At least this one has a remote…'

'Getting up to operate the controls is good exercise,' I replied primly. 'And who was it let the bloody cat in there anyway?' Expensive, high end electronics and furballs don't mix. An important lesson I seemed to have difficulty getting the crew to understand. Arguments about keeping down the rodent population fell on my deaf ears usually, my argument being that any rodent population that had survived over a century on board the Arcadia in her dark-matter infused bowels wasn't going to be intimidated by a few pounds of purring fluff, unless it was packing something the size of Hannibal's hand-cannon. At which point Kei would tell me I was exaggerating, and I'd recount the time I'd gone looking for stolen dimensional oscillators and had the crap scared out of me by glowing red eyes and scuttling sounds made by things the size of a hippopotamus.

_'That was Eddie,' she'd told me loftily the first time. 'Scaring the piss out of rookies is a time-honoured tradition.'_

_'Not unless Eddie was in six places at once…' I'd snarked back, and then really wished I'd thought that one through before I'd spoken, given what had happened to the poor kid..._

...and now I was wondering if the _Thunderbolt_ had a rat problem. And then whether or not mysterious dark matter anti-lifeforms could inhabit a swarm of undead rats…

'Are you even paying attention?' Kei whispered in my ear.

'Sorry. Just thinking about rats. Giant, dark matter zombie rats from beyond the dawn of time…'

Hannibal's eyebrow WTF-d me more eloquently than words could ever express, and I shrugged. 'Train of thought. Or more of a stream of consciousness.'

'I worry about you sometimes...' he muttered. Our hosts arrived before I could frame a suitably pithy reply, and I was up.

My audience was small - just Hannibal, Kei, Nero, Yanez, Yngwie and two other men, both in their mid-twenties. Between us we only occupied half of the available seating in the room, and I asked Nero where the rest of his crew was.

'No point,' he replied laconically. 'If these ships your friends tell you are coming our way are dark matter, the only ship capable of fighting them is the _Thunderbolt_, and currently we're considering our options there. Yanez will brief the other heads before we take off.'

What was there to consider? I wondered. Just get her out of the water… Unless you've got other priorities…? 'You haven't introduced your other officers,' I said out loud.

He inclined his head, accepting the point. 'Apologies. Morgan -' The tall dark haired man to Nero's right offered his hand across the table. 'My first mate, and Carmaux -' this one, sandy haired and pale eyed, didn't offer his hand - he toyed with a large throwing knife, twirling it around on its point and flipping it back and forth whilst staring at me from under a shock of untidy hair. Morgan, I decided, smiled too much. Carmaux not at all. 'Weapons and countermeasures.'

'I assume you've assured yourselves of their identity?' Hannibal beat me to it by a whisker, so I sat back to let it play out. As expected, Morgan of the smiling face just shrugged off the suggestion. Carmaux, sitting next to Hannibal, stuck his blade under the old man's nose. 'Where do you get off accusing _us_ of being reboots? Maybe I should slit you open from throat to crotch to see if _you_ regenerate, old man,' he snapped.

The response played out so quickly I longed for a slow motion replay: Hannibal simply kicked the younger man's chair out from under him, and as he flew backwards, somehow had the knife in his hand before Carmaux's arse hit the floor.

His own backside didn't even leave his chair. Across the table Yanez leaned partly on one elbow, his fingers curled in front of his mouth to hide a smile. Nero just let out his harsh laugh and ordered his man to his feet. 'Does that answer your question?' he asked. Hannibal flicked the knife neatly and precisely so it landed point first between the man's feet, from where it was snatched up with a snarl. 'Nice moves - you haven't lost your touch.'

'Captain…' Carmaux growled out the word. 'Why are we bothering with these people? An old man, a woman and this…' he sneered at me in particular - 'half-blind fribble.' He was waving his knife around far too freely for my liking as well as being an arse, so I gave Kei the nod. She had him pinned in a chair and flicked the knife into place between his thighs with such casual disregard for his ability to father children, every man around the table flinched in anticipation as it landed. 'Play nice,' she advised him. 'Or I'll take your toys away. Permanently.'

I don't think any of them thought for a moment she meant his knives.

Yanez clapped slowly, his eyes on me and a slow smile spreading across his face under that moustache. 'Nicely played, Harlock. When do we get to see what _you're_ capable of? Or are we supposed to lose sleep over how much more dangerous _you_ might be?'

Busted… 'Pray you don't,' I answered amiably.

Hannibal was sitting on my blind side, so I couldn't see his face unless I made an effort, but from the eyebrow raising and lip-twitching on Nero's face opposite I had a pretty good idea there was some eye rolling going on.

I've had Hunter - a depraved, homicidal lunatic so vicious that even the Illumidas - a warlike empire deep in the heart of the Greater Magellanic Cloud - have issued a shoot on sight order - grovelling at my feet in terror begging me not to kill him. (Or maybe _to_ kill him… he wasn't that coherent at the time…) I can make both of Promethium's tame attack dogs - Faust and Leopard - back down rather than go toe to toe in a fight.

My own family and crew? Not so much...

Time to nip this in the bud. 'I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me…' I muttered as I stood up. Hannibal coughed. Under his breath I heard him mutter back 'I notice you left the preceding line off…'

'Do I look suicidal?' I murmured. 'Kei - would you play back Blaze's message please?'

The holo projector displayed the time radar footage of the three ships Freya had found. Seen in miniature, they didn't look impressive. Ribbons of black swirled around them making it impossible to see the ships within, and they looked like a child's spinning top. The ribbons were dark matter - a far more rigid, controlled version of the billowing clouds that surrounded Arcadia when she moved. With nothing sharing their space, scale was impossible to judge.

'The last one we encountered as larger than the _Arcadia_,' I told Nero and his men. 'At least three times our volume. It almost crippled us - it's one thing to get up close and personal with normal ships, but two dark matter vessels in combat…'

I shut my mouth like a trap, belatedly remembering who I was talking to. Nero stared intently at the footage as it played on its five minute loop, and frowned.

'I remember. Basically, we have no advantage in going against them - they can regenerate as fast as we can I assume?'

'Faster,' I told him. 'And ramming them? Not a smart move.'

He snorted and waved off that comment. 'Ramming was one of Harlock's more insane manoeuvres,' he replied off-handedly. 'Crazy bastard…' Next to him, Yanez stared at him open-mouthed, looked as though he was about to call him out on something, closed his mouth with a snap and shrugged.

Morgan leaned over the table and peered at the display as though sticking his nose in the middle of the 3-D playback would offer some greater insight. 'They could be smaller?' he asked.

'I wouldn't bet on it.' I appraised this one more closely. Carmaux, I judged to be Nero's Ali - the one he let off the leash to provoke a reaction. Yanez - his XO - the thinker. His Kei. (Maybe in all senses? I couldn't get a reading on that, but figured it was none of my business.) Morgan however… Huh. I knew my history. If that was his real name, he'd be one of the few people around this table who could claim that. And under the van Dyke beard, the long curly hair and the foppish clothes - because damn, the man was dressed to kill and seemed to love embroidery - there was something decidedly familiar about him.

Well, his roots were showing for a start - his hair wasn't naturally black - it was closer to mahogany. And his irises weren't blue - those were contacts…

Hannibal however was staring at the man as though his eyes could laser a hole right through him, making the younger man squirm in his seat.

'Hannibal?' I tapped my great-something grandparent on the arm to get his attention, whilst Kei was explaining our previous encounters. 'A word?' I jerked my head in the direction of the door, and he nodded once and followed me out.

'What is it?'

'Any reason why you keep staring at that first mate?'

He peered back inside the room, and I watched as curiosity turned into a frown. 'He looks familiar…'

'Just what I was thinking. He's wearing prosthetics to change the shape of his face and the dye job wasn't done by a pro, but strip away the paint, the padding and the beard…'

He lifted a hand to shush me, then reached inside his shirt and pulled out a scarab locket with a skull and crossbones on the obverse. He flicked it open to reveal a small holo projector, which he operated with deft fingers. A group picture appeared - a family group, in front of a large rustic farmhouse. Three women and three men - one couple older than the other four, but clearly related to the younger group. Hannibal… and Maya. The two young men were several years older than the girls, but the resemblance was plain enough.

He flicked past that still however, until another appeared. Two young men in the uniforms of the SDF from maybe thirty years ago. One blond, the other dark-haired. They stood in front of a pair of fighters bearing the mark of the elite Space and Aerobatics team for Destiny, and were holding medals up to the camera with broad smiles on their faces, arms around each other's shoulders.

Closer than brothers, even in their disappearance together twelve years ago.

Hannibal looked from locket to the young man in the war room. '_Bakana_…' He shut the locket with a snap. 'Impossible. Dan would be nearly sixty…'

I knew that. My old friend Dan - Ichimonji Dantetsu - had been his great grandson. Dan's disappearance along with his closest friend Henry Douglas was still a mystery…

I think we both came to the same conclusion from different angles at the same time. 'Doppler?' I made it a question, Hannibal snarled a statement.

'Very specific age groupings,' I pointed out. 'No in-betweens.' I knew the demographic I'd seen on this island made no sense. Well… it did now - if you knew your history. I laid a hand on Hannibal's arm to stop him striding right back into the room to demand answers. 'Wait.' I told him quietly. 'We've got bigger problems….'

I really should know better. It runs in the whole bloody family after all. He shook my hand off with a scowl, and strode back into the room with me hard on his heels. He pointed at Morgan.

'Khalsa - care to tell me how the hell you got your hands on a clone of a missing SPG colonel who's wanted for treason?'

* * *

For several years, after becoming Harlock, I'd been both an orphan and an only child.

Happy days…

Instead of the reasoned, intelligent discussion regarding the oncoming threat from three Phantasma class battleships, I was now an onlooker as the founder of the Millennial Thieves - widely considered to be _the_ voice of reason in an often unreasonable galaxy - yelled at another relic from times gone by whilst everyone else in the room - especially the subject of said argument - stood or sat by looking miserably awkward, unable to see a way to easily defuse the situation.

'If you didn't know then why is he wearing such a bloody awful disguise?' Hannibal, I had to admit, had one hell of a bellow when he was pissed.

Nero could match him for volume. 'Because he's just come back from two months undercover on one of Doppler's satellite worlds. Dammit, Mamoru - do you really think I knew who he was? We hit a cargo transport convoy we thought was carrying supplies to the Machine Empire, and it turned out the transports were stuffed to the gunwales with clone tubes. A deal Doppler's been doing with Promethium to bolster her sources of life energy in Andromeda. Millions of fast-growing clones are being shipped here. We intercepted one such shipment about eight years ago. Morgan and most of my other people were part of that shipment.'

Ohhhhh… that was news. And thoroughly unwelcome at that. I shared a look with Kei, and saw the same realisation on her face.

Nero and Hannibal were still shouting over each other. Needing to get this charlie foxtrot back under control I reached over Kei's lap, drew my pistol from her holster with an apologetic smile, and fired a bolt over their heads into the wall opposite.

See. _Now_ I felt more at home, staring with no little satisfaction at the blast mark on the wall, and their stunned faces, as everyone else turned to face me, jaws open. I handed the weapon back to Kei with a thank you, and sat back in my chair with my arms folded. 'Better. Now that I have your undivided attention, gentlemen, perhaps we can get this out of the way so that we can work out why - for the love of Earth - you didn't lead with this?'

'You shot my ship!' Nero looked and sounded aggrieved.

'Live with it. Next time it'll be kneecaps. Now: Morgan, is it?'

The young man nodded numbly, looking as though he'd rather be anywhere than here, and I didn't blame him. 'Force-grown… so whose memories do you have?'

'None,' he replied quietly. 'Most of us are given a kind of generic template - I gather they need clones conscious for the extraction, but not necessarily as distinct individuals. Myself and a few others though… we have a base template of skills. Muscle memory.' He shrugged. 'For some reason I've got mad piloting skills.'

Mad was right. Dan had been the best pilot in the SDF bar none. Except… Morgan was shorter than Dan, who'd easily topped six foot four and been built like a bruiser. Morgan was around my six one and closer to my build. When I mused out loud it was Hannibal who jumped in.

'You don't necessarily get an identical individual. Environmental factors play a part, even with monozygotic twins. And the cloning process used can affect the outcome. Add in the fast-growth issues, which can cause their own problems… Remember, DNA is just a template, not a mould. It's about potential.'

'Since when did your skillset involve the finer points of cloning? Nero asked.

That one I could answer. 'Since he stuck his nose into Lar Metal's political problems a while ago, after he got bored rocking great-grandchildren on his lap. They've been fiddling with their DNA almost as long as Doppler's bunch and their elite caste have been using reproductive cloning almost as long.'

Nero sat back in his chair and smiled. 'The Millennial Thieves Hannibal… you do realise it took me _years_ to make the connection...'

An answering smile.

Nero burst out laughing, startling his crew. 'I should have known… but then I didn't know you were still alive.' He smiled wolfishly. 'I thought you hated that nickname?'

'Nickname?' Both Kei and I leaned towards him. 'Do tell…'

'Back when his commission was reactivated, and he was put in charge of the remnants of the Second fleet. His remit was logistics, which covered the Deathshadow Fleet. Half the admiralty thought it was an expensive folly. Someone called them the Nibelungs' white elephants - unwanted, expensive and potentially embarrassing gifts you can't refuse - and then some wag dubbed him "Hannibal".'

'They were laughing the other side of their faces after that first engagement,' Hannibal replied with a grimly satisfied smile.

'They almost crapped themselves. Hell, so did we, and we were flying them…'

'Yes...' I drew the word out as I stared at our host. 'About the very expensive, very powerful elephant whose room we're in… why is he…' I jabbed a finger at Yngwie 'not getting this beast out of the water and into space where it belongs?'

Morgan answered. 'Because the dark matter engine is all that's powering the stasis generators on the rest of those transport pods.'

Well, that explained the power drain...

'Rest?' Kei's voice had that world-weary tone that suggested she - we - were not going to like the answer to the next question. 'Just how many are there?'

'Twenty seven. Each holding over ten thousand clone tubes, in suspension.' Morgan shot a glance to his captain. 'He's right. You should have told him.'

I'd been taking a much needed drink of water when he spilled that titbit. My spit-take went all over the table in front of me. 'Nero… I'm starting to understand how you ended up with Harlock's merry band of screwups… When you were in Intelligence did you take lessons in the art of producing obfuscating reports or was it a natural talent? How many people on this colony?' I asked, wishing I could just put my head in my hands and bury it there for the duration. I was getting the first whanging pains of a nasty headache in my right temple.

'About two thousand. All we can support for now.' Yanez ran his hands through his hair, gripping it so tightly at one point I thought he was going to yank it out by the handful. 'As I said. We don't have the facilities. We were hoping with your contacts...'

I almost choked. 'Nearly three hundred thousand clones?' My brain did a few somersaults trying to work out if there was anyone we could realistically dump that little gift on, and came up dry.

'Mostly children, as they're smaller and cheaper to transport,' Yanez confirmed bleakly. 'Pod sizes are the same but they use fewer resources, for just as much return on their investment. The convoy we attacked was shipping them in vitro. Once they reached their destination they would have processed the clones, used the transporters as prefabricated factory units, and just settled down to churning out more to feed the great machines.'

Morgan chipped in. 'The job I've just returned from was to locate the local manufacturing plant for Doppler's operation and shut it down.' He turned back to his captain. 'I couldn't go through with it, captain. I'm sorry. They're still breeding clones down there. Thousands of them. You want that place destroyed, you'll need to find someone else to do it.'

'They're dead either way,' Yanez pointed out. Even his own captain stared at him in horror for that one, but he held his ground.

'They're only clones,' Yngwie added. 'Who cares?' Morgan's fists clenched at his side but the nibelung just sneered at him. Nero laid a restraining hand on Morgan's shoulder, but the look he gave the snotty little nibelung would have curdled sour milk. Before anyone could start another argument I jumped back in.

'So… we go from a heads-up about a metanoid incursion with three incoming metanoid - or nibelung- warships to a rescue mission for thousands of clones who'd otherwise be turned into dialhead crack? Or worse? Just wanted to be sure I was on top of current events,' I added sarcastically. 'And before anyone gets any ideas, I'm with Morgan here on this one. I've no idea how we'll deal with them mind you, but they didn't ask to be brought into this world, and I'm not prepared to write them off as collateral damage.' I frowned. This entire situation was getting worse with every drip-fed revelation, and I wasn't far off wanting to wring several necks around the table. 'I ought to leave you to stew in this mess you've dragged us into,' I told Nero bluntly. 'If you'd been upfront about all of this… but no. You just had to keep pieces to yourselves. Why? Still having trust issues?'

'How could I have known what kind of man you are?' Nero asked.

'Here's a hint: one who gets very irritated by being strung along being spoon-fed vital information at the wrong time,' I snapped. 'How quickly can you get this ship in the air?'

'A local day, once I make a start on getting her ready to fly.' Yanez was out of his seat before he finished speaking, heading for the door.

'Yanez, wait… the transports…' Morgan looked more than a little anguished. 'Once you disconnect the dark matter engine and reconfigure for space flight, the stasis system goes offline. If we don't make it back, those units will begin the process of forcing the growth of their contents, and there just isn't enough power or resources for all of them to be brought to term.'

'This is why you've buried yourself on this planet for years?' Hannibal asked. Nero nodded.

'One of them. How could we just leave them? Think of it, Mamoru. A lot of the genetic stock that Doppler's people took belonged to people - families - completely wiped out in the war. Their progenitors are long dead, but they can live again… new lives in a new world. A fresh start…

Kei, Hannibal and myself all winced at that little non sequitur. 'Once you lose power to the stasis pods, how long before the clone banks reach a critical development phase? There must be a point of no return?' I asked.

'If we can keep the nutrient tanks supplied, maybe two weeks. The pods themselves will just start up again - our input is to keep the stasis fields working to stall development, and once growth starts again, we'll risk losing thousands if we try to shut down mid-cycle - they're not designed for stop-start, and the system was put together with spit and a prayer.'

'How many ships do you have?' Hannibal, the former logistics expert, was on his feet and pacing up and down the confines of the war room.

'Fifteen.'

'And how far away is Doppler's supply base…?'

'About five days each way…' Nero looked as though he was beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel he'd fallen into.

Hannibal folded his arms and stared at me. 'Well, Harlock?'

We were getting rather well practised at tossing the ball between us. 'That's your area of expertise,' I told him. 'If you can organise a raid and resupply for those transports, that leaves the _Arcadia_ and the _Thunderbolt_ to take on these Phantasma.' Why do I volunteer for these things? I really ought to know better by now...

'And the _Miranda_.' A familiar voice added from the doorway. We all turned to see a bikini-clad brunette escorting Blaze into the war room, looking rather hot and sweaty in his flightsuit. 'Planning on having some fun without me?' he asked me with a wry grin.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' I responded warmly. 'But Hannibal might have some issues with you using his ship…' I caught sight of the four idiots hanging back behind him just a little too late to stop the storm heading their way.

Kei surged to her feet, strode over to the doorway, body-slammed Ali out of her way and stared at the three unapologetic miscreants lurking in the corridor, with her hands on her hips. 'And just what are the three of you doing here?'

I slipped the gun belt for my cosmo dragoon into place and cinched it into place. She hadn't even noticed me undo the clasp as she'd gotten out of her chair. 'Safer for everyone,' I mouthed at Hannibal. Blaze I wagged a finger at. 'Shame on you, dragging them all the way out here,' I tutted.

'Dad?' Mamoru's plea for help was tough to ignore, but this time he was on his own. I stood up. 'Blaze - grab Ali, I need to get the two of you up to date. Hannibal - I guess you know your job without me riding herd on you.'

'What about them?' Hannibal jerked his hand in the direction of the terrible trio currently getting a suspiciously quiet dressing down and looking sorrier for themselves by the second.

'If they survive, send them topside. I'll take them with me when the _Arcadia_ arrives.'

Yngwie chose that moment to open his tiny, annoying mouth. 'What is that thing doing here? Those creatures are supposed to be confined to their control units.' He sneered, pointing a finger at Freya, his voice dripping with contempt, his face looking as though he could smell something nasty.

Kei _could_ have stopped a pair of chivalrous idiots defending their much-adored foster-sib. Hell, any one of four other men in the room could have stepped between the dick and the two fists that connected with his thick head. None of us bothered.

And whilst watching the cretin go down as though he'd been poleaxed was immensely satisfying, he didn't look as though he'd be getting up anytime soon, and we still had a _Deathshadow_ to prep for combat...


	11. Chapter 10

**_Ventimiglia_**

Mamoru leaned against the outside wall of the wooden hall that ran along the foot of the cliff behind him, and stared out at the sea. 'Wow… you know, if it weren't for the crisis, this would be a nice holiday spot.' He jabbed Rei in the side to get his attention. 'Look! A ship…'

Rei shrugged. 'So?'

'Sails? A proper wooden sailing ship… how often do you see that?'

'Is that a rhetorical question? Because I've been to at least two Suiseijin worlds, and they ban motorised vessels, so that's not exactly uncommon.'

'Yeah… but a real honest to goodness _pirate _ship?' He pointed at the flag flying over the stern - a snarling tiger's head between crossed scimitars on a red background.

'Slow and inefficient,' Rei replied disinterestedly. 'Far too much like hard work to operate. And besides, I'm not a fan of water in that quantity. Comes of being too dense to swim…' When his companion sniggered he snarled a 'watch it…' at him.

'Didn't say a word,' Mamoru replied airily. 'Oh - finally! Hi dad!' he waved at the figure strolling towards them.

In lightweight royal blue pants with a billowing white shirt open to the waist, Harlock strode towards the pair slowly. But then, Mamoru thought as another hot breeze ruffled his own hair, in this heat, rushing around wasn't much fun. 'Nice togs,' he said with a smirk as his father drew near. 'Really adds to that imposing air of bad-assery you like to cultivate… not.'

'Cheeky sod,' Harlock replied fondly. 'You're not so big I can't take you over my knee…'

Mamoru laughed. It wasn't a genuine threat - a clip to the ear was about as far as his father would go, and both of them knew it. But face to face with his father for the first time in three months, he realised that they were - for the first time - almost eye to eye. 'You've shrunk…'

'You've shot up,' Harlock replied with a grin. 'Too old to give your father a hug?'

'Never.' Mamoru embraced his father and they separated with pats on the back. 'Daiba sends his love.'

Rei snorted and Harlock's visible eyebrow almost vanished into his hairline. 'Really?'

'Well, I asked if there was a message, and he sort of grunted at me, so I figured I'd translate,' Mamoru replied breezily. 'So how's the patient?'

'He'll live, but the pair of you cold-cocked him into the middle of next week. I'm not sure he knows what century it is, let alone what day.'

'He had no call talking like that about Freya,' Rei interjected sulkily.

'No question. But I have to get that ship space worthy in less than twenty-four hours, so that means asking Freya if she minds taking his place on the _Thunderbolt_,' Harlock replied testily. 'Seriously, boys - try and remember there are consequences? I'd prefer it if neither of you had to learn that the hard way.'

'You're not letting Freya go alone with strangers are you?' Rei asked. Harlock turned to him with a sly smile.

'Worried about her?'

Rei flushed. 'No. I mean, yes. Not like that…' He kicked at a stone and pouted, until Mamoru laughed.

'Oh, it's _exactly _like that,' Mamoru told his father with a smirk, deftly avoiding the kick aimed at his ankle. 'Oi! Pack that in.'

'Then shut the fuck up.'

'You - language,' Harlock pointed at Rei. 'You -' the digit was jabbed at Mamoru '-stop being an arse.

'Can you get him to stop breathing while you're at it?' Rei asked. 'Because I find the two go hand in hand…' Something over Harlock's shoulder got his attention. 'Who's the peacock?'

Harlock didn't bother looking around. 'Sky blue embroidered shirt open to the waist? White pants? Black boots with too much shine to be natural? White waistcoat covered in gold embroidery? Tall, dark handsome with a silly little beard?'

'That's the one,' Rei replied as the figure drew level.

'It keeps following me around. Kei wants to know if I plan on taking it home…' Harlock dead-panned. 'Morgan,' he added, as the younger man reached his side.

'Harlock. Sorry if I'm interrupting, but your ship's apparently dumping delta-v and coming in fast. Should be here in a few minutes.' He stared at the boys lounging against the cliff-face. 'Are these your sons?'

'That one, yes,' Harlock replied, nodding in Mamoru's direction. With the cheeky grin the boy took a leg with a time-honoured flourish, sweeping an imaginary hat across his knee as he did so. 'Mamoru, my eldest. The surly one is Blaze's brother, Rei.'

'I am _not _surly!'

Both Mamoru and Harlock laughed in the face of his indignation. 'Oh. You so are,' Mamoru told him, sticking an elbow in his friend's ribs. 'He's prickly, but you can learn to tolerate him over time,' he advised sagely.

Morgan looked from one to the other, confused. 'Are you not friends?'

The boys gave him mirrored smirks. 'Of course we are. You think we'd let anyone we _didn't _like speak to us like that?' Rei asked.

'Doesn't stop you being an arse though,' Mamoru added, punctuated with another sly jab.

Whatever retort Rei shot back was lost in the deep rumble that caused their chests to reverberate almost painfully as it drew closer.

'What the hell is _that_?' Morgan yelled over the noise. The other three just shared triumphant smiles.

'My ship!' Harlock shouted back over the increasing decibels.

Overhead, a large black cloud began to blot out the sun, and horrified cries from the few souls still on the beach were lost in the rumble.

'Maybe you should have warned them?' Mamoru shouted into his father's ear, as the _Arcadia_ tore through the sunny sky and hovered above the bay, its dark matter cloud billowing and thinning as it came to a stop above the headland and settled down with a weighty thump that rattled the ground beneath their feet.

'Now where,' Harlock shouted back, with a smirk to match either boys', 'is the fun in that?'

* * *

From his vantage point aboard the _Tonnerre, _anchored in the bay above the resting place of the _Thunderbolt_, Nero stared at the _Arcadia_, where it squatted above the beach and the increasing crowd gathered at the foot of the cliff to get a look at it. At rest, her dark matter cloud was reduced to a few wisps, quickly whisked away like malevolent dust-devils by the sea breeze. Without a word he handed the antique telescope to Yanez. 'I'd heard the tales… but the reality…' he shivered. 'What the hell happened to turn her into _that_?'

'You were there,' Yanez pointed out reasonably. 'Don't you know?'

Nero tugged on the long black waistcoat he wore, straightening an imagined crease under his gun and sword belts, and then pulled at the cuffs of his wide-sleeved black shirt. 'Once we were dragged into the maelstrom the dark matter explosion created, we were too busy trying to stay alive, and we didn't see any of the other ships after the chain reaction started.'

Across the bay, the _Arcadia's_ red-eyed skull glared at them, a titanic rictus grin on its face. The unholy throbbing roar of its engines had dulled to a deep hum as it powered down, but it dominated the skyline, adding several hundred feet to the cliff it sat on. 'I really hope the cliff's strong enough to hold that weight,' Yanez ventured with a worried frown on his face.

'According to the scans it's bedrock.' Nero assured him. 'Harlock was pulled into the heart of the storm he created,' he whispered, half to himself. 'I wonder what he found there…'

'From what you tell me,' Yanez said, snapping the telescope down into its compact casing, 'I suspect whatever did _that_, he brought with him.' The deck swayed underneath his feet and he grasped one of the ropes that trailed across the gunwale. 'How the hell does a ship go from something like the _Thunderbolt_, to that monstrosity? It's as though…'

'...someone slew a mighty titan, flayed and hollowed out its corpse as a ship?' Nero replied with a stray smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

Yanez shuddered and slapped the now compact telescope into his friend's hand. 'You do know that no-one now gets all those references to old legends?' he told him, a twinkle in his eye. 'They died with Earth.'

'Nothing truly dies, so long as there is one man alive to remember it,' Nero replied.

'I'm sure you meant to say "man or woman", father!'

Both men turned to see the speaker - a young woman in her mid-twenties, long fair hair lightened by the sun and tied in a pony tail that reached below her shoulder, strolling towards them, flanked by two others the same age, and alike enough in looks to share a common heritage. All three were beautiful, golden haired and fair skinned, and a chorus of wolf-whistles accompanied their path.

'My pearls!' Nero held out his arms and the three ran joyfully into his embrace. 'Where's David?' he stared past them, looking for the young man who was Morgan's usual partner in crime.

'Took a skiff to the island. Didn't want Morgan to have all the fun,' the daughter closest to him advised with a smile. 'Carmaux wouldn't let us go with them…' she pouted prettily.

'Carmaux has his orders, child. I don't want you meeting these men just yet,' he said firmly.

'But why? I mean - they're helping us, aren't they?' asked the tallest. She leaned over the side of the ship so far for a moment it looked as though she'd topple into the clear blue waters.

'I have my reasons. In all these years, have I ever done or said anything that was not in your best interests?' he chided. All three sighed in unison, and he smiled fondly at them. 'I need you here, anyway. The _Tonnerre _needs moving to safety - we'll be launching the _Thunderbolt _in a few hours…'

Not without more feminine protests, he persuaded them to get to work, and he leaned back against the rigging to watch them, a happier but still thoughtful smile on his face.

'You will have to come clean at some point,' Yanez told him, watching the young women with an admiring and far less fatherly gaze. 'This is one action that might very well come back to bite you on your expanding arse, my brother.'

'He doesn't have to know,' Nero replied calmly. 'What the eye does not see, the heart cannot grieve over…' A small frown however was forming on his brow. 'I thought him dead all these years. I did not create them - it seemed right, at the time…'

'No. But you recognised them and cracked those tubes. Raised them as your daughters. He might grieve, yes, for a while, for the reminder of what was lost. But to _keep _them from him? From their _father_?'

Nero's eyes flickered to the young women laughing with the crew. 'It's not his _daughters _I worry about keeping from him,' he muttered darkly as he watched them. 'How the hell do I explain this - and then…' His frown deepened. 'Where's Ianthe?' He waved more imperiously to the girls. 'Dione - where's Ianthe?'

The girl looked up when her sister elbowed her in the ribs. 'Father?'

'Any one of you. Where's your sister?'

'Went with David, in the skiff.' The speaker was Erik, Liam O'Malley's twin.

All three gave the young man who'd spoken a scowl. 'Tattle-tale,' Galene hissed at him.

Yanez stared out towards the beach, where the little sailing boat was pulling into shore, with two tiny figures in it. 'You know, we could have strung up a piece of string and a couple of tin cans between here and the island,' he said amiably.

'Shut up.'

'Or a heliograph. Or even semaphore. Any of them, right now, would be capable of saving your arse from what's going to head in your direction if - or rather when - Admiral Mamoru Okita discovers who is currently shagging the arse off the clone of his brother's great grandson…'

'Shut up. Besides, they're married.'

Yanez' chortle turned into a wheeze. 'Oh, Because that makes _everything _better.'

'What were the bloody odds…' Nero muttered, running his fingers through his long curly hair, clutching it as though ready to yank it out by the roots.

'_Karma_,' Yanez coughed. He chuckled, ignoring the black look from his friend. 'And I did suggest you might not like what would be in a transport marked up as coming from Harken GenTech...'

'Yanez...'

'You really should have just told them _all _of it,' Yanez added helpfully. 'Probably about two seconds after you found out he was alive.'

The three sisters looked up as one at the large splash that had all heads turning on the deck. Their father strode past them, one hand on the hilt of his gravity sabre, ignoring the stares from his crew.

'Why is uncle Yanez in the water?' Dione asked, peering over the side of the ship. Halia and Galene joined her, Erik adding himself to the viewers mostly to grab a surreptitious handful of Dione's left breast. 'Ooh! language!' she called down to the splashing pirate. 'Should we drop a rope?' She slapped Erik's hand away playfully, and shrieked as he transferred his attention to her ass.

'Nah.' Erik gave her a peck on the cheek. 'He can swim for shore. The exercise'll do him good.'

* * *

Ali stopped to watch the lovely - and heavily pregnant- young woman climb out of the small wooden sailboat with the help of a tall blond man who looked suspiciously familiar. 'Bloody hell… Hank Douglas as well? I wonder how many of _him _there are in those tubes…'

'I daren't go there,' Blaze told him with a grin. 'Mom's going to go ballistic once she hears this one.' He frowned. 'Huh. _She_ looks familiar as well…'

'Lot of it about, I'd stop trying to work it out if I were you. But this population problem? Not going to be made any easier by them breeding…' Ali smirked. 'Have they heard of trap-neuter-return here?'

'You're a bad man,' Blaze told him solemnly as they walked. He mopped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and pushed sweat-sodden hair out of his eyes. 'How the hell does anyone stand this?'

'This?' Ali stretched, luxuriating in the warm breeze. He'd removed his shirt a couple of hours ago and borrowed some shorts from someone close to his own build, and now slapped along barefoot through the sand. 'Bloody lovely is what it is. I grew up on New Macedonia, and this is winter weather…'

'I was born on Lar Metal during the last years of the long winter,' Blaze told him. 'This… this is unbearable…'

'Awww… just take yer shirt off. No-one around here will care.' He sniggered and elbowed the younger man in the side. 'In fact some of 'em might even enjoy the sight…'

Blaze glanced over to where a group of four identical young women were watching over about twenty ten year olds. He looked away first, flushing, when one of the women whispered something to her siblings, making them all laugh.

'Unless,' Ali added, 'You find the whole identical quadruplets thing creeps you out?'

Blaze gave him a sideways look as they moved on. 'Why would that bother me?' he asked. 'My mother's a clone, remember?'

Ali coughed, briefly considered apologising for indeed forgetting the fact, then moved on. 'So the whole Dan 'n' Hank thing…'

'They're no more Dan or Hank than my mother is Promethium. The Holy Queen treated them as interchangeable, but unless they were crowned, her clones were as individual as Mamoru or Wataru, or any normally conceived twins or multiples. Nature creates clones all by itself, remember?'

'I never heard of any woman giving birth to a thousand in a litter,' Ali pointed out. Blaze shrugged, ceding the point. 'But even natural twins have been considered taboo in ancient times.' He paused. 'Hey… if Doppler's got DNA from before the war… my great-grand parents were caught up with that rat bastard…' He shuddered theatrically. 'Running into Grandy Lizzy and Grampa Con as teenagers would be _freaky_…' Then he scowled and kicked at the sand. 'Fuck… they could be putting _them _through those life-extractor distillation factories… That's plain _wrong…'_

'And now you see why Harlock and Hannibal - and this Nero - are so clear on why we need to try and save these, and put a stop to the production. It doesn't _matter _if they're clones. Hell - you'd have to count out most of Lar Metal's surviving population if you considered them non-people, since despite the rules about miscegenation, the elite caste were constantly popping out bastards, which is why I get to call Leopard "uncle" to his eternal annoyance. And I know for a fact Shaitan's pointy-eared racist eugenicists use the technique to maintain their own numbers. They're _human _and for some of us it would seem, they're family. That guy back there? Technically, he's Lisa's uncle. That rather entertainingly chirpy copy of Dan? _Takuma's _uncle. Does how they got here really matter so much?'

He stared back along the beach, and watched the group of children they walked past earlier playing in the waves, jumping and squealing as the breakers rolled in. 'There's been so much death in the last century and a half, Ali. Should we be so cavalier about life? Look at them: They're just children. Orphans in a way no-one could ever understand who hasn't gone through that.

'Mom understands it, better than anyone. She was "bred" to be a vessel for an ancient, spiteful old woman who wouldn't accept death; to have everything she was and ever could be hollowed out and destroyed at someone else's whim. Somewhere in the bowels of Promethium's metal world, there are still hundreds of her sisters, just lying in stasis until the Bitch-queen needs them. These young men and women… the children… they're no different, Ali. That's exactly what _their _creators planned for _them_. And the extra irony? The woman who rebelled against that same fate alongside my mother is the one sanctioning this.'

Sobered, Ali watched the group playing. 'When you put it like that… It's like the captain keeps saying, isn't it? We just never learn…' He looked slyly over at Blaze. 'Was it weird? Growing up in such a fucked-up society?'

'It was dangerous,' Blaze replied soberly. 'Marin and I had to be kept hidden not only because we could have been used against our parents, but because we were doubly an abomination to the ruling class. Only the workers were supposed to breed naturally. Our mother was supposed to have been a Queen, and only breed carefully constructed _daughters _in vitro. Dad was the illegal offspring of an elite and his natural-born mistress, secretly raised as a true-born. And then _they _dared to defy the system, and had us. In a very real sense we were a living symbol of our parents rebellion to some. In the final days, with the Holy Queen closing in before our aunt threw her lot in with mom, we were almost captured - we'd have been publicly executed as a lesson to both them and to others. If not for Hannibal…' he shook his head. 'Marin and I… we owed him our lives. Fifteen of his people died getting us to safety. _He _was almost killed. I've never known anyone else - apart from my parents - who would fight so hard for others, to protect those who can't protect themselves. Unless it's Harlock.'

Giving up on the heat, he pulled his shirt off over his head and tried the sleeves around his waist. 'Sod it. If everyone else is walking around half naked…'

Ali eyed him up sourly. 'I've changed my mind. Can you put it back on again? All those fit lasses are staring at you instead of me.'

Blaze looked him up and down, a finger to his lips as though deep in thought. 'You know… I'm not surprised. Young, fit with nicely chiseled abs versus bit worn around the edges and going a bit to seed?' He poked Ali's middle, where despite the muscled slab of his chest, he was indeed looking a little soft around the stomach.

'Gerroff. And you ain't _that _much younger than me, if I remember right.'

'Good genes,' Blaze deadpanned. 'I may be a bit of a mongrel by Lar Metal standards, but the longevity gene is dominant, so…'

The young version of Henry Douglas walked by, still chatting away to the lovely honey-haired young woman from the boat, and Blaze turned to watch her walk past, his frown back in place as he watched her suddenly wave and call out to Morgan, who'd been walking towards them. The young man waved back and broke into a run, meeting her before she'd gone even ten yards, sweeping her up into a bear hug and laughing with her, before kissing her soundly and placing a hand gently on her very prominent bump with an adoring smile.

'Didn't know bun in the oven was your type,' Ali said slyly, nudging him in the ribs. 'So she's Morgan's, is she? Kinda pretty, if you like that girl-next-door look… Though pregnant? Hell no. Far too hormonal...'

'Kei's right - you _are _a dinosaur… She _does _look familiar…' Blaze mused. 'And _recently _familiar. Like I've seen her in the past couple of days…'

His jaw dropped open, and he choked slightly. 'Oh fuck…'

'Ooh! Language!'

'Shut up, Ali. Is Hannibal anywhere around?'

Ali did a swift three-sixty, pirouetting in place. 'Nope. Why?'

'Because I just remembered where I've seen that girl. There's a portrait of her in Hannibal's quarters on board the _Miranda _\- I've been staring at it every night for a week.'

'You sleep in his bed? Eww.'

'Kind of missing the point,' Blaze snapped.

'Then who is she? Doesn't strike me as a candidate for a Millennial Thieves' girlie calendar… Far too wholesome.'

'The ship's namesake, you pillock. That lovely little woman over there having the breath kissed out of her by Dan's copy? That's _Hannibal's _first wife…'

Ali swallowed hard. 'Oh. Fuck. I gotta…'

'Do what?' The voice was so close to his ear the speaker was almost blowing into it.

Ali shrieked and jumped about a foot in the air, not having seen or heard his captain walk up behind him whilst he'd been distracted. Blaze, who'd at least been facing the right way, laughed out loud.

'Do not _do _that, you bastard! I swear I'll put a bell on you one day…'

'So jumpy…' Harlock tutted. 'What's got those too-tight shorts in a bunch? Besides the obvious?'

'They're not too…' Ali's eyes narrowed as he realised he was having his chain yanked. 'Arse.'

'The young lady over there,' Blaze nodded in the direction of the lovebirds.

Harlock smiled. 'Morgan's wife - Ianthe. He was telling us about her. Eight months pregnant, I gather, and he's torn between staying here with her and going on this rescue-stroke-raid of the production facility with Hannibal and Yanez…'

Blaze exchanged a meaningful look with Ali. 'What?' Harlock asked. He looked again at the couple. Sighed heavily. 'Oh. Like that is it? Okay… I can follow this through most of the way - who the hell do I have to keep away from _him _who'd know _her_?'

'Hannibal will be leading this mission, right?' Ali asked slowly. 'I'm asking because I was planning on tagging along, since… well… you know…'

Harlock huffed slightly. 'I do know. And yes, you can go along and spoil Doppler's day. I wouldn't dream of stopping you. But can I have an answer sometime before you sail? I'm getting more than a little tired with people around here giving me information on a drip-feed.'

'You know the _Deathshadow Zero_'s named for Hannibal's wife?' Blaze said slowly. He watched the penny drop without satisfaction.

Harlock spat out a string of expletives that made Ali take a step back in admiration. 'Whoa… I don't think that first one is even possible and the third will get you arrested for just _asking _about it in any brothel on three planets I can name…'

'I'm not going to ask how you know that. Where the hell is that misbegotten, obfuscating, evasive son of a bitch hiding?' Harlock snapped.

A wet hand tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled round, his cosmo dragoon almost leaping into his hand, to see a dripping Yanez smiling at him. 'On the ship,' Yanez answered, pushing the muzzle of the pistol out of his face. 'Under the circumstances, I'd be tempted to let you tear a strip off him. I did warn him.'

'It's nothing compared to what Hannibal could do to him,' Harlock advised him coldly. 'Any _other _confessions he'd like to add?'

'I think I'd better just discuss this somewhere quiet. Just the two of us. Before we break the news to your illustrious ancestor, perhaps we need to figure out some damage limitation?'

'Like ensuring Morgan there doesn't end up without a couple of vital body parts?' Harlock replied drily, as he let Yanez lead him a short distance away, their heads together in a heated conversation.

Ali dug Blaze in the ribs again. 'See,' he grinned at his companion. 'I told you they needed a trap-neuter-return policy. Maybe Hannibal will demonstrate…'

Blaze winced and rubbed his temples. 'Rescue our friends. Maybe take down some nasty little stuff my aunt's up to. Maybe even work out how to save and re-home several hundred thousand clones. Any one of those - even all of them - are kind of well within our comfort zone. But no… once again that murky crap from before the Homecoming War just keeps on coming back on our friends there like a boomerang. It just keeps on giving…'

'Like a case of the clap?' Ali offered helpfully.

Blaze scowled. 'Could this get any _more _complicated?'

'If we're talking creepy twins? Two thousand copies of that homicidal whack-job of a cousin of yours...' Ali sniggered.

'Narrow it down, Ali,' Blaze snarked back. 'They _both _scare the shit out of me at times.' He shuddered. 'Two thousand copies of Emeraldas bearing down on you…'

Ali shuddered in his turn. 'Actually, I was thinking of Maetel…' He brightened. 'Hey - Let's just hope Luna doesn't get any ideas about the cats…'

Blaze rolled his eyes. 'Oh Lar… how does anyone keep track of your mood swings?'

'Now why,' Ali replied with a wink, 'Would I let anyone do that?'


	12. Chapter 11

I originally had only my predecessor as an example of pre-Homecoming War humanity, but with a second example (three if you count Hannibal, four Tochiro and five Mimay who has a bit of a free pass for being an alien) I was starting to think that "cagey with information, never tells you the whole story" was perhaps one of the reasons we almost wiped ourselves out.

By the time I'd dragged the last few titbits out of Yanez, I was alone on the beach because the rest of the chickenshit cowards had left, expecting me to face the oncoming storm - otherwise known as Hannibal.

Almost alone. Mamoru was leaning against a piece of driftwood that was planted in the sand -a red flag with a rampant tiger in gold on it fluttering in the early evening breeze - arms folded, ankles crossed in the time-honoured pose favoured by stoic badasses across three galaxies and several thousand years of recorded history and fictional narratives.

'Hoping for your inheritance sooner than expected?' I twitted him. He just let me have that incandescent shit-eating grin that must be coded on a dominant gene down the male line of our family.

'Figured the rest of them would leave you hung out to dry. Besides, Grampy wouldn't kill you in front of your own son, now would he?'

'Keep calling him that and I wouldn't count on your own survival,' I told him. 'But if Nero thinks I'm doing his dirty work for him, he's sadly mistaken. It's not my job to get between men on personal matters. Especially ones this painful. Which is what I told his boyfriend back there. Now I'm going back to the ship for a much needed shower and change of clothes, and to relieve Selen.'

'Back into leather? That's a relief… you really don't pull off that whole badass space pirate thing in baggy silk pants.' he smirked as we walked. Cheeky sod. I ignored the jibe. For the first time he wasn't scuttling to keep up, his stride keeping pace with mine. He might even have been slowing down for his old man, I realised ruefully, since I still have a slight limp from a catalogue of abuse to my leg over the years. 'It's weird though isn't it? I mean… what were the odds?'

'Pretty damn good, sadly.' I'd pondered the same thing myself for a while, but you had to factor in the interested parties, and that's what I told Mamoru as we walked. 'This is a Doppler Corp operation, and Harlock, Tochiro, Hannibal and Nero had several run-ins with them before the war. They were keen to optimise their elite genetic selection, and Tochiro tells me that included Harlock's family - though they considered the line something of a wild card. We always suspected they were behind what happened to Dan and Hank, and they and Nero's "daughters", were among a group of clones found in a separate part of the main transport, and given more detailed memory baselines to the rest, so I'm guessing _they _weren't destined for the distillation factories. Luna can do some work-ups once she has some samples, but I'll bet good money these also aren't exact copies. Best guess? Military grade fodder or worst case - new bodies for the rebels and/or their metanoid masters. Since they checked the other transports -' Yanez, once he got talking, didn't stop '- and didn't find another chamber like that one, my thinking is these were top of the line samples. Which is some relief, because the idea of thousands of family members fed into Promethium's machines fills me with horror.'

'And thousands of people who aren't related to us _doesn't_?'

I glanced at him, but he was wearing his most neutral expression. 'Ouch. Determined to call the old man out today?'

He shrugged. 'It's a pretty simple question, though, isn't it? I mean, do we care more if it's family, even if not directly? It makes it more _personal_, sure, but it doesn't make it more wrong…'

'Some people would argue none of them matter, since they're not really human. Or at the moment, even truly alive.'

'By "some people" you mean Emeraldas?' He sighed. 'She's kind of focused, isn't she? You had a real fall out with her over that clone bank a few years back. Is that why she left?'

'She has a real hate on for her mother - understandable - but those clone-sibs are just as capable of becoming Selen as they are Promethium… and she took out several other "models" - for want of a better word - when she did it.'

We reached the ramp of the Arcadia's side hangar, and he tugged on my sleeve just before my foot touched the deck. 'Dad?'

I turned. Waited, whilst he wrestled with a question. 'If someone had got a copy of Yumi… raised her, loved her as their own… I mean… you despise Lazarus…'

'Wait right there,' I told him. 'Back up. Lazarus is a whole different ball game. He's got copies of my brother's memories, and frankly, he's even more of an asshole. And even if someone copied Yumi's memories, that would only be a starting point. She was only seven when she died - she'd grow up to be a different person, no more or less an individual than you or Wataru are.'

'Wataru and I aren't identical,' he pointed out.

'Nobody knew that until we had to take a DNA sample when you were sick,' I pointed out. 'You looked so alike anyway, it made no nevermind when you were kids. But to answer your question, I have no idea. One thing I do know? I do not agree with Emeraldas on the subject - and neither does Selen.' I hoped he'd leave it there, because the Millennial Queens' situation was a tangled web. Killing the clone-sibs was a moral black hole, since unless mind-wiped by Promethium, they would indeed have the same choices their sisters had. Cracking them out of their tubes and letting them have a life? Rather more of a problem, since you'd have no way of monitoring them for infiltrators. And we'd had a couple of attempts over the years - hence Emeraldas' shoot on sight policy.

Either way, we were screwed. And the current situation was shaping up to be a larger scale version of the same problem. Logistically, morally and legally, it was an epic ballache, and I just wished Nero had found someone else to dump this on. 'If it helps, I'd consider her my daughter, and your sister. But she wouldn't be Yumi, and to think of someone that way? A replacement for what was lost? It's just as toxic as thinking of them as a non-person. You can't just replace people. There were good reasons human cloning was never mainstream, and remains the purview of tyrants.' I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to this, but since he was the one who raised it, I asked. 'Never mind my fossilised opinions, Mamoru - what do you think?'

'That it's a headache whichever way you look at it. But that once someone's in this world? Then you make good on it. Mind you - living in a world of identikit copies? That's just got to be downright weird, right? Imagine a planet made up of millions of just one person…' He grinned. 'Hey, I think I watched that warp-vid…' The grin turned into that infamous smirk. '...right after watching that one about _you_ with the gay…'

'Do not go there,' I warned him. He just sniggered, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

'Sorry.. But it is hysterical. And the sequel…'

'Which you shouldn't be watching since it's got a Mature Adults rating.'

'Oh please - that would exclude most of the crew.'

True, that. If we're talking emotional maturity, most of them would score lower than my boys.

'And besides,' he continued, 'Hang around with this lot long enough and sex ed classes just pale by comparison… I think I'd seen most kinds of kink by the time I hit puberty…'

'Please do not voice that opinion outside of friends and family - I'd hate to be arrested for allowing minors to be corrupted…' I drawled.

He snorted. 'Alongside what? Multiple counts of piracy, grand larceny, destruction of government and private property, sedition, terrorism, treason, unlawful access to and use of Warp Comm and other restricted servers, assault on a Fleet officer, actual bodily harm, murder, compromising commercial and military navigation and shipping lanes, and arson in a naval dockyard? Dad - the galaxy's depopulated, fragmented and human civilisation reduced to a few pockets of sanity in an insane world. Anyone complaining about someone under eighteen being aware of sex - or having it - needs to get a sense of perspective.' He fist-bumped my shoulder. 'And since I do have said sense of perspective, there's something I need to fetch from the _Miranda_ \- mind if I take one of the bullets?'

'One. _One _count of arson in a naval dockyard,' I corrected him. 'And if I hadn't blown those dark matter scrubbers way back when _you_ wouldn't be here...' He smirked. 'Fine.' I waved him off before it hit me. 'Hang on - you're _asking…' _I narrowed my eye. 'Mamoru… what are you up to?'

'Nothing bad, honest!' He skipped back down the hangar before I could grab hold of him. 'I was talking earlier to that Ianthe about the transport power problem - In fact, I think you'll like this. Once you get over wanting to ground me for a year…'

'Fine. I… wait - what can _you_ bring to that power problem?'

He waved one hand over his shoulder without turning back. I leaned against the nearest wall briefly, and watching him bounce to the bullet parked closest to the hangar bay door. I could have commed the bridge to ground the vehicle, but then he'd probably just grab the shuttle Blaze had come down in.

'If he puts so much as a scratch on that…' a voice growled near my right ear.

'Just buffed the hull?' I asked Doscoi. My surliest engineer - and yes, he makes Ali look like a ray of sunshine - just glared down into the hangar. 'He's as good a pilot as any of the men, Doscoi. Relax. It's not personal if the planes get a bit bumped from time to time.'

'Yeah? You ain't the one who has to polish out the dents,' he grumbled. 'Nice to have you back though,' he muttered gruffly.

'Selen too hard on you guys?'

'Too bloody soft,' he muttered. 'She was making them donuts. Donuts!' he threw his hands in the air. 'What self-respecting pirate captain makes _donuts_?'

'Yeah…' Franz had been walking past and leaned on the wall next to me companionably, a dreamy look on his face. '_You _never make us donuts… crispy, warm, sugared donuts...'

'I used to bus your table and wash your laundry,' I pointed out. 'That not good enough for you?'

He smiled. 'Awww… rookie… you know, I do have a pile of dirty underpants if you feel the need to earn some points back…'

I slapped the back of his head, which he mostly ducked through long practice. Franz was one of a handful of crew still left from the original, when I'd come aboard. They'd follow me through hell and frequently have done, but later additions - even those as long serving as Doscoi - still didn't get the attitude. Or why I allowed it.

'Too soft…' Doscoi muttered again, walking away shaking his head. Franz grinned at me from under his 'tache. 'Somehow, that time, I don't think he meant Selen…'

'_Donuts_?' I asked, raising an eyebrow. He laughed.

'Oh hell yes… we were so well behaved she needed something to do. Seems she loves to cook.'

'Donut get used to it,' I told him, walking away with the same backwards wave my son had used earlier.

It took him at least three seconds, then he groaned. '_Captain…'_

* * *

I gathered all the relevant parties in _my_ war room a couple of hours later, and you could cut the atmosphere with something a lot less impressive than a sabre rifle - five of which were currently on show on hips.

Make that six, because Morgan walked in with one as well, and then seven because the blond slab of muscle behind him was also carrying. They both looked comfortable with the weapons, which is unusual enough of itself, since it's not a skill taught these days in the Fleet Academy. The blades were of a much older vintage than their current holders. Not exactly hard since if you thought about it, both men were about ten, not their apparent twenty-four, twenty-five.

But I suppose it answered the "has anyone told Hannibal?" question.

I glanced over to where Rei was sitting, motherball hovering behind his shoulder, already at the table, with Blaze shoving his feet off it with a slap against his boots. One artificial young man who looked sixteen but who was actually created over twenty years ago, and a whole group of young people who looked over twenty but who'd been brought into the world no more than ten years ago.

Then we had the more vintage members of the group, one of whom looked even close to their ages: Hannibal; Selen; Me; Blaze; Kei… Khalsa slash Nero. Yanez I gathered from titbits he'd let drop was about my age - he just looked it.

No-one could accuse us of being normal...

Yanez was staring at the group made up of myself, Hannibal, Blaze and Selen with an amused smile, which was then extended to his captain. 'Did I miss a memo?' he asked with a spritely grin, before taking a free seat next to Ali, who scowled at him. 'No-one said anything about a uniform…'

It took me a moment to work out what he was talking about, and then I had to smile. I'd been stuffed into a black flightsuit and a matching jacket, with the gravity cloak over the top. Both Hannibal and Blaze wore the black flightsuits of the Millennial Thieves with a long mantle over them. Selen was similarly attired but without the mantle, and Nero…

Nero looked as though he'd stepped out of an historical action vid. Black knee boots with a much wider top than ours, almost but not quite identical to ancient sea boots. Tight black pants that frankly fitted where they touched, and a mid thigh length black waistcoat over a full sleeved black shirt that was open almost to the belly button. Over those his gun belts sat, antique cosmo flintlock on one, the gravity sabre in the other, and a wicked looking curved blade that looked as though it could disembowel a man just by looking at him thrust through the belt under his sabre. Over that he wore a shorter gravity cloak than mine, totally black, asymmetric and slung over one shoulder.

'I think you forgot the earring,' Ali sniggered.

'They're too easy to pull off in battle,' Nero replied without missing a beat.

'Well for once at least you won't disgrace me,' Kei murmured in my ear as she passed me on her way to the table. 'Who's the Colonel Douglas look-alike?' she asked out loud.

'This is David,' Nero said, introducing the young man. 'Since we don't have room for all of my captains, I only brought along the most senior, bar two. Liam O'Malley you've met, and there's also his twin Erik, but they're prepping the rest of the fleet.' He smiled. 'And those two are _actual _twins, for the record - I picked them up on a transport from New Maracaibo about fifteen years ago, bound for Promethium's "distilleries".'

'Is it something in the water?' Ali asked, 'or just coincidence that that makes three _Deathshadow_ captains who make a habit of picking up waifs and strays? Coz you and Hannibal can't pass a stray kitten without picking it up either...'

'I'd suggest that the kind of man who can handle the pressure of the responsibility of these ships is also the kind of man who protects anyone who needs it,' Selen told him. 'Compassion isn't weakness.'

'The only thing _you're _missing is the freaky ship,' Ali replied jauntily. 'And no, but it does seem to get us all into a shitload of trouble,' he grumbled. And this from a man who'd once gone under cover on a fragile asteroid to save a bunch of orphans used as forced labour.

'Well… at least no-one's dropping rocks on my head, and you've kept your pants on. Thus far.' I told him, referencing said incident. He glared at me and folded his arms, but said nothing, probably not wanting anyone to know he'd been caught out.

'So what's the plan?' Rei asked. 'I get that you and Captain Black over there will be kicking arse with the dark matter ships. What are the rest of us doing?'

'You'll be sitting it out here,' I told him, before he had to take the grounding from either his mother or brother. 'Mamoru says he needs you for his little project regarding the powersource.'

'Oh. That…' He developed a consuming interest in his own fingernails at that point. I tabled it and moved on, figuring I could squeeze the details out the pair later.

'Nero and I will be taking _Arcadia _and _Thunderbolt _to intercept the Phantasma ships, before they reach the system - I'd rather take them out in the interstellar gulf, than close to home. There's no knowing what could happen if we destroy them, and it makes a mockery of our defences here if we blow up the sun.'

Morgan raised a hand. 'Is that even a thing?'

'Not if we stay in the intergalactic void,' I assured him. I hoped he didn't notice that I had my fingers crossed. 'Morgan? You'll be with Hannibal, securing that Doppler Corp facility.'

'I thought we were going to transport anything we liberated back here?' Morgan asked.

Hannibal stepped forward, and the younger man instinctively took an involuntary step back - then caught himself, and resolutely stepped forward again, and held his ground. And eye contact. Good for him… he had a spine under the fancy embroidery. 'Won't work, and we can't - as you pointed out - risk the clones down there any more than we have to. Simpler to secure it, and move the operation there once we're done. Doppler's over-extended by setting up a base this far away from the Milky Way - it'd cost him a small fortune to retake it, he'd prefer to cut his losses. We'll take however many of your ships you can spare…' he nodded to Nero. 'The rest will stay in wide patrol in-system. Maximum spread. Anything that gets past Harlock and Khalsa will be their problem.'

'On the ground,' I picked up again smoothly, 'Selen will help co-ordinate both the maintenance of those transports, and any ground defences.'

'So she'll be co-ordinating with us.'

Three young women walked into the room, in shorts and tanks. Like the rest of the adult clones, they appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One of them - the shortest - grinned and blew a kiss at David, whose fair skin went bright red.

I nudged Yanez in the ribs. 'You said they were going to be safely offshore until we'd left?'

'Do _your _kids do what they're told?' he whispered back. 'When Nero told them, they kind of tore a strip off him…'

Good for them… and good point. Even Nami has a stubborn streak a mile wide, and she's a little angel compared to her older sister, who used to lead her brothers into trouble all the time even at seven. _Yeah… leave that one alone, and don't wonder how you'd feel if it was Yumi standing there in come-fuck-me shorts and a barely there tank top_… Ali had his mouth open and was staring in open admiration and even Blaze was sneaking a long, head to toe appreciative look when he thought no-one was looking.

Hannibal, on the other hand, had gone so pale his scars - the three that marred his right cheek - stood out as dark slashes on his skin, vanishing into his silver beard. He recovered quickly, and stepped forward.

'Girls…'

Hannibal raised a hand to shut Nero up, but his daughters got there before him. Three young women with determined looks on their faces that seemed very familiar, faced their adoptive father, hands on hips.

'We talked it over, father. The consensus was you're being over-protective - both to us, and to him…' the girl talking pointed to Hannibal. She looked so like my mother, this had to be a clone of Aurora. Which was the point when I appreciated a fraction of just how weird it had to be for Hannibal.

_Oh… you have no idea_… Tochiro murmured in my head. _But they are seriously cute_…

'Khal… you and I are overdue for a very long, _pointed _conversation when this is over,' he said very, very softly. Selen and Blaze both flinched. 'Introduce me, would you?'

Nero swallowed hard. 'Dione, Galene and Halia. My daughters.' He said the last word as though defying Hannibal to contradict him.

'Father told us you were our real father - biological.' The second girl - Galene? said quietly. 'We asked Selen if it would be okay to meet you…'

Hannibal closed the distance to Dione and smiled sadly. 'It seems she was the only one who had the balls to talk to me. Dione, is it? My oldest daughter's name was Aurora, and she was that one's -' a hand jerked in my direction - 'great-great grandmother.' He reached out and touched her face gently. 'She was younger than you, the last time I saw her. Galene? Her name was Elena. And Halia? Your original's name was Ekaterina. Katie. They died… when Earth was destroyed. With their mother.' His smile was so full of sorrow it would have broken the hardest heart in that moment.

There are many kinds of courage - and in a way I think it's easier to face our enemies, than to stand there, as Hannibal did then, in front of those copies of his long-dead daughters. Harlock's way of dealing with pain and loss had been to open a bottle, and try to uncork the universe to make it all go away. And this was where Hannibal and I both differed from him, in that we tried - as best we could - to make the best of the crap that we waded through. But I'm not sure I'd have had the courage and the strength that Hannibal showed us, if our places had been reversed. If Yumi, or my foster-sister, Nami, had stood in front of me...

Hannibal spoke softly to the young women. 'I never saw them as young women. They were still so very young... ' He touched each of them very gently - just a hand on a cheek. 'To see in you what they would have been… grown so beautiful. So like their - _your _\- mother...' He turned to Nero. 'For keeping this from me, Khal… I will demand a reckoning.'

Nero flinched and placed a hand on the hilt of his sabre. 'Mamoru… I am sorry.'

'Don't be. However Doppler and his thieving lackeys will be.'

'I love you,' Ali spoke up, waving his hand in the air for attention. 'Just for the record...'

No one laughed, but the tension did ease, slightly.

'But…' Hannibal continued. 'Thank you. For saving these three, and Ianthe. And for the chance for me to see them grown.' He turned and walked towards the door. 'I need a moment.'

Even Ali watched him leave without making a snarky comment. I caught Kei's eye, and followed him out, leaving her to carry on with the briefing.

He'd only gone a few yards down the corridor, and was leaning against the wall. As I walked he slumped down to the floor, his posture mirroring that of his brother, almost twenty years ago, when Kei and I had rescued him from Isora's chains… 'Hannibal…'

'I just need a moment…' His voice, reduced to a husky whisper, was also so close to Harlock's in that moment…

_Mamoru_? Tochiro's gentle voice over the comms made him raise his head. _I've been following this. If you need to talk…_

He hauled himself back to his feet, not without effort. When I moved to offer a hand he waved it off. 'It's fine.'

'It really isn't. You know… Blaze could take the _Miranda_. You've been training him to replace you eventually…'

He shook his head. 'I'm the best person to lead that side of it, just as you and Selen can handle your jobs. And Harlock - I appreciate the concern, but I'm not my brother. I don't run from pain.'

'No-one should have to face this,' I said softly. He smiled that sad smile again.

'No. But here we are. And after we finish here, Lisa Douglas and Takuma Ichimonji will have to face it as well. And Oedo - he loved that pair of jokers as though they were his own sons… But you don't deal with problems by wishing them away. We both know that.'

He patted my shoulder as he walked past, heading back to the war room. 'We learned it the hard way, more than once.' He paused before reaching the open doorway. 'I meant it, Harlock. It really does matter… to see them grown. Doppler might have taken their DNA for his own purposes - but to see them… after all these years? Given a second chance? It hurts - but it's a hurt I can live with, under the circumstances.' He paused. 'They're not my girls… it's in the eyes. And that's what hits hardest. Not their faces, but to see a stranger looking back at you…' He sighed, then pulled himself together. 'Have you noticed just how shockingly gentle these people are? They're barely ten years old in real terms, but expected to be adults, by training, and by biology. Khalsa's doing his best, but they're not as worldly as they would be had they lived their lives from birth to this point. They're all about to get a terrible wake-up call…' His tone was sombre, his face thoughtful. 'Khal was right to eventually restrict the waking up to the youngest, physically. They have more time to mature.'

'And yet,' I murmured, 'we're going into battle with them.'

'There were never going to be any easy answers to this,' Hannibal replied. 'But these "specials" at least had additional conditioning. I hope it counts for something. But whichever side comes for them - Promethium, Loki or these Metanoids - they need protecting.'

'Mamoru asked me if it mattered more, if they had the faces of family,' I mused.

'Mamoru is frequently wise beyond his years,' he said quietly. 'What was your answer?'

'Truthfully? I changed the subject.'

'Seems he gets his smarts from both of you,' he said with a sly smile. He re-entered the war room, and the escalating conference.

* * *

Kei caught my eye and I sauntered over. 'Did I miss much?'

'There's an additional wrinkle…' she whispered.

'Hold up a minute!' Mamoru stuck his head around the door. 'Sorry I'm late.' He dropped into a chair next to Rei. 'Carry on - but I think we might have a solution…'

Morgan cleared his throat. 'We're risking the entire complement of clones once the _Thunderbolt's_ dark matter drive's disconnected. There's no way in hell there's enough power for all of the ships - not to keep them in stasis, and we can't risk the clone banks powering up.'

'So you lose a few,' Ali shrugged. 'They're not really alive, are they, until they're hatched? Those ships are underwater, right? Why not just cut the more marginal transporters loose - the ones with the worst chances - and let them sink?' He looked from one silently shocked face to another. 'What?'

I shook my head, and Kei looked as though she wanted to put her face in her hands. Rei muttered "dude" and moved his chair away rather ostentatiously, presumably to avoid splatter. The rest just seemed to be waiting for someone else to call the bonehead out.

Morgan balled his hands into fists so hard his knuckles were white where he leaned on the table across from my big-mouthed crewman. 'Is that what you people think? That we're not real?'

'That ain't what I sa…'

'You're _aware, _in those tubes… Once that stasis field is gone, they'll be awake. Unable to move, unable to even think properly until the downloads take place and that's another moment of terror… but they - we - can _feel_. And you can't forget it. It's your worst nightmare. There's pain, and darkness… the forced growth is carried out so fast, and without painkillers, because why waste the money? If we did this… they'll die alone, in the dark, screaming, and not knowing why, or what's happening to them. But they'll die in agony and in terror. Cruel enough to come into the world like that. Crueller still to die without love, in the cold, the dark…' he trailed off. 'Ianthe and I... We weren't sure… at first… if we did the right thing. Wanting a family. To be normal. To bring a life into the world with love. But it's _right_. It's natural. What we endured… what the rest of them are enduring right now, is wrong. But we won't right it by _drowning _them. Or allowing them to die without a fight.' He glared defiantly into Ali's face and then mine, and Kei's, finally lingering on Hannibal's, as though searching for something in our eyes. 'We talked about it. All of us. I wish I could say we came up with an answer…'

'Mom? Is that... I mean I never thought about what would happen - to be born as an adult…' Blaze asked, looking rather shell-shocked at the thought.

She wrapped her arms around herself but said nothing. Hannibal reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder, very gently.

I stepped in. 'None of us did. Lar Metal's programme was pretty much done by the time I saw much of the planet.' Though it did make me wonder a little more about Luna's history. Our doctor was a broken woman underneath her bluster, had worked in the elite medical facilities before opening a clandestine clinic amongst the workers, and I wondered if it wasn't totally due to the loss of her child and husband to the mechanisation… There'd been a _lot _wrong with Lar Metal long before Selen's sister had lost the plot.

Hannibal sighed heavily, and I knew from the look on his face what he would say next. 'You're having second thoughts about the _Thunderbolt_.' I said bleakly, the sick certainty settling like a cold lead weight in my stomach. Looking around the room, everyone else felt the same.

Move the _Deathshadow One_, and the clones on those transports would die. Alive, sentient, _aware… _They might die anyway, with losses in the process, or if we couldn't schedule a staggered awakening to take account of limited resources. Or if those three Phantasma got past me and took them anyway. There were no certainties bar one: Whatever was in our power to do, we'd do it. They might die in _spite _of everything we could do, but I'd be damned if they'd die _because _of it.

'I wasn't comfortable with writing off those transports even if we thought of their "cargo" to be so much meat in storage,' Hannibal said quietly. 'The _Arcadia's _the most advanced of her class… can you…?'

'Just _Arcadia_, against _three _Phantasma? You don't ask much…' I quipped half-heartedly. Mentally I was already trying and discarding numerous battleplans the way Nami and Kanna can go through their wardrobes before a night out. I couldn't ask any of Nero's ships to help out - they'd be wiped out in the first salvo.

One ship against several would work when the advantage was with _Arcadia_. And against any normal fleet, that held true. Against her own class or better, on a level playing field?

It couldn't be done. Not with one. I wasn't sure I could do it with two.

'I have to, Hannibal.'

Morgan glared icy daggers at me. Well, so he should. 'Hate me if you want,' I told him. 'But I know the power of those ships. If they get past me, you're all dead. Every last one of you. If the nibelung rebels and those metanoids get their way and open the Gate of Yedar, _everyone's _dead, because there won't be a universe left that we'd be able to live in.'

I could see Hannibal thinking the scenario over, and knew to the second the moment he came to what he thought would be a compromise. 'Then I'll fly with you, and Blaze can take the lead along with Morgan on the raid. They don't need me…'

'Yes, they do. The _Miranda's _a great little ship, but she's not in the same weight class. Besides - you're the logistics expert. Everyone tells me this - Mimay, Tochiro… your bloody annoyingly incorporeal brother… you know what we have to work with, Hannibal. Make it work. You have Selen, and there are plenty of your lot embedded in Andromeda fighting Promethium. Time to call them in. But the longer we argue, the closer those ships get.'

He nodded, once. Morgan opened his mouth to speak, snapped it shut. 'Speak up,' I told him. 'We don't hold back.'

'There's a window… of maybe three days where the transports run on auxiliary power. Is there a way to maybe use some other power source to keep them running? Link the ships together more eff-'

'Or you could do that with the help of a portable dark matter generator?'

Seven eyes were suddenly fixed on my oldest, who sat there, hands in his pockets, hair flopping down over the damned eyepatch - which he wears because he gets arsy about popping in the prosthetic that's supposed to help his socket grow properly - with a wide, smug grin on his all too handsome face.

'Okay...' I said, starting out as slowly and quietly as I could manage. The little bugger had just spent several months on Niflheim, so I was guessing "rhetorical" wasn't on the table. 'I take it that means you have one?'

Nod.

'From Niflheim.'

Nod.

'Which you, Rei and Freya were planning on handing off to Taro when you got home?'

Open and shut mouth like carp on a cutting board. _Busted_… Nibelung tech was not supposed to leave the planet, unless under the aegis of Professor Oedo, the project leader.

'Blaze had no idea,' he blurted out.

Blaze looked as though he wanted to strangle my son and I was tempted to tell him to get in line.

'Not helping your case,' I replied. 'Given that you shouldn't have been able to sneak anything past him if he'd kept his damn eyes open.'

'Oh, he only had eyes for Emilia…' he began. Then rapidly, finally, shut his mouth when he realised he'd dropped Blaze right in it. The guilty party just rolled his eyes and moved so his mother was between him and Hannibal. 'Oh, c'mon,' Mamoru added when faced with stony silence from Blaze, myself and Hannibal. 'Everyone else is bloody well shagging, so who cares?'

'Not you I hope,' I watched his face as he struggled to frame a non incriminating reply. 'You're _fifteen…'_

'So was I,' Hannibal pointed out helpfully. Before I could point out that he really wasn't helping, he twisted the conversation back on track. 'Is it in working order?'

I waited until the rest of them finished sniggering before addressing Hannibal, who now had that shoot-me-now look on his face. 'You really, _really _want that one back, don't you?'

'Oh hell yes,' he muttered. 'Mamoru - the drive?'

'Oh yeah. That's also working.' His shit-eating smirk was plastered across his face to stay for the duration by the look of it. 'Rei and I can get it going, but it does take a fine hand to keep it focused. If Freya's needed on the _Thunderbolt…'_

'Then you'll have to talk nicely to Yngwie,' I told him. 'And probably apologise for knocking him out…'

I wondered if the mutinous eye glaring out from under a thatch of untidy brown hair was how others saw _me… _'...or you can just try glaring at him and offer to put a boot up his over tight tushie, whatever works for you,' I continued smoothly. 'But you'll have a dedicated line to Tochiro, just in case. He's the best brain we have.'

I watched that irritating - and familiar - smug smile widen - and then vanish so fast it almost got friction burns, as he realised he'd just talked himself into staying behind, safely out of the line of fire without me or his mother having to tie him down first.


	13. Chapter 12

_To the Loyal Readers: Thank you for following - you know who you are! This will be the last post before the seasonal break, since the interwebs goes dark for about 2 weeks, and I hate posting in even more of a vacuum than usual! Corsairs both Black and Cosmic will return in the New Year! (Rumours that I considered calling this one "Captain Scarlock and the Mysteroids" are totally unfounded!)_

* * *

Orange flames from a campfire appeared to lick the horizon as they leapt and danced against the backdrop of the setting sun vanishing into the ocean. Although too close to sit near, as the temperature still hadn't fallen to night time levels, the scent of food cooking in the ashes raked to the side of the fire filled the air, carried on a gentle sea-breeze to where eight young men and women sat on a pile of blankets thrown down to protect bare skin from the still hot sand. Periodically someone would pass round refills from the demi-johns sticking out of a large bucket of defrosting ice water.

Morgan leaned back against a blanket-covered dune and massaged the dainty feet resting in his lap, smiling at Ianthe's blissful sighs. 'Apart from a couple of arseholes, I'm pleasantly surprised. They're not at all what we expected,' he said. He took one hand off foot-rubbing duty and shoved the lean figure making itself comfortable against his shoulder. 'Find someone else to lean on, Dav. Ianthe will get the wrong idea…'

'Ianthe,' a feminine voice from lower to the ground replied, 'Is going to start getting growly if you don't get back to rubbing her feet…'

Morgan grinned and re-applied himself. 'You do know what they say about people who talk about themselves in the third person, right, love?'

'She's stuffed full of your spawn,' David pointed out mildly. He took a large swig from the glass in his hand. 'She gets what she wants and can say what she wants…' He lay back on the blanket and put his arms behind his head. 'That blonde in the leather thights is something else, isn't she?' he sighed appreciatively. 'Those legs just go on forever, and did you ever see such ti…-'

'David!' Ianthe's spluttered indignation made everyone laugh.

'She's Harlock's,' Morgan pointed out. 'And the mother of that scarred kid. So first - totally unavailable and second, way too old for you.'

'She doesn't look it,' Erik said from the other side of the blankets. 'In fact I got Galene to check the files from the Space Sheriffs' outpost? They're all _old_… I mean, almost fifty.'

'They don't look that much older than us,' David pointed out. 'But then, we're not exactly our apparent ages, are we? Just a few years of experience built on top of a personality matrix…'

'Doesn't make us any less who we are,' Ianthe said firmly. She reached out and squeezed Morgan's hand. 'We're _us_…'

'Are we so sure?' Liam, Erik's twin plonked his tall form down next to them. Across the fire the girls were giggling together, and he waved at the trio. 'Yanez and the captain had their heads together earlier - they can't figure out who shut down the grid earlier. We could be well and truly infiltrated - and how would we _know_?'

'It can't be one of us though - I mean - we'd know?' Morgan couldn't help the question creeping into his voice. David patted his knee, the only part he could reach from prone.

'S'okay, Morgan. Those two gingers are far too ridiculous to be reboots, and we all know each other too well for an imposter to pass.'

'We do - but we aren't the only cohort. If you were going to slip un-noticed into us, a group would be the perfect cover - we've always kept in pairs or groups to avoid being replaced, but what if a group were covering for each other?' Morgan had stopped rubbing his wife's feet and rested one hand on a puffy ankle. 'More scarily - what if some of us were sequestrated before we were decanted? You wouldn't spot strange behaviour then, would you? Because we're all weird when we're first born, until the synapses start firing. You'd always have been like that…'

'Father and Uncle Yanez think that there might have been a weak point whilst Yanez was kidnapping our new friends,' Ianthe said drowsily. 'But I think whoever took out the grid had been around far longer than that - I mean - how else would they know? In such a short time?'

'Can they access your memories?' Liam asked.

'Good luck with that,' David snorted. 'We don't _have _any… not that would be useful to anyone.'

'Useful enough,' Morgan pointed out. 'But that thing that attacked the beach - we'd never seen anything like that until these pirates got here. Maybe _they _brought it?'

'It went straight for them, father said.' Galene dropped gracefully to the ground and crossed her legs, sticking her tongue out at David when he leered appreciatively. Her sisters sat next to her and passed around the baked roots, which were juggled from hand to hand with much blowing on fingers until a laughing Dione passed out the plates. 'Harlock seems nice - he's handsome, in spite of that scar. And I like the tall one with the dark hair - he's got a lovely smile…'

'The one who hangs around with his mom?' David asked slyly. 'Yeah… I can see how that would appeal… oof!' He glared at her, and she pulled her bare foot back from his chest. 'I don't think "licking you from head to toe with his eyeballs" is a good enough reason to exclude them from suspicion,' he continued. 'We don't know these guys…'

'I would think if he's leching at the ladies, then he's kind of by definition "not an undead creepy reboot with no personality…"' Dione offered. 'Also - they're all kind of silly…'

'Don't fall for that,' Liam warned. 'These guys are in the same league as the captain and Yanez for tough - maybe more, if they live up to their rep. That banter? They know each other so well they can pick up and run with the tiniest cue between them. We were watching them all the time on the _Lightning_. And that nice old man? Might be over a hundred and fifty and change, but strips down to lean, hard muscle and looks as fit as Harlock… don't let the silver hair fool you. I don't think they're reboots, but I wouldn't piss any of them off on a bet.'

'But if they're not reboots, we still need to nail down who is,' Ianthe said. She shifted until she was sitting up and leaning back against Morgan, almost purring as he dutifully rubbed her lower back. 'Oh gods… I'll be so glad once this is over… any bigger I'll need a crane to get me back to my feet…'

'Wasn't going to be the one to say it, sis,' Dione twitted her. She shrieked and ducked the paper plate that headed her way. Ignoring the peanut gallery, Ianthe continued: 'We can't be sure how many might be among us. They might try and sabotage the island defences - or they might be on board one of the ships…'

Dav raised a hand and sat up, looking around intently. 'Did you hear something?'

'Apart from your stomach?' Morgan drawled.

''No… behind…'

'Don't shoot! It's just us!' A bright, youthful tenor called out. The two youths who'd arrived with the _Miranda _stepped out of the shadows of the dune, the one-eyed boy waving his hands in the air above his head - the mock surrender somewhat ruined by the fact he was holding two large bags that contained something with a delightful smell. 'We thought we'd be sociable, and brought goodies…'

He grinned and placed the bags next to Ianthe with a wink. 'I was told that one should always offer food to the pregnant woman first…'

'...or the guys,' the other boy said, dropping down between the twins with an equally chirpy grin, which for some reason looked a lot less reassuring on his narrow face. 'Dig in - the _Arcadia's_ cook is one hell of a chef, and my mom runs the best ramen shop on Tabito…'

'Your mom runs the _only _ramen shop on Tabito,' the other boy pointed out. He grinned again as Ianthe sniffed the contents and grabbed a bag, slapping Morgan's fingers away with a mock growl. 'Plenty to go round, even with the small singularity Rei there calls a stomach. I'm Mamoru, by the way. Any of that rocket fuel going begging?'

David placed a protective hand on the jug. 'You don't look eighteen…'

'Probably because I'm not. I'm fifteen, and I've been drinking engine room hooch for far longer than I will ever admit to my somewhat over-protective parents. Besides - if we're counting, how old are you guys?'

Morgan shrugged and grinned at his friend. 'Dav - he kind of has us there. Pass it over. If he passes out…'

'I won't,' Mamoru assured them. 'Actually it doesn't really do much - kind of have my dad's metabolism when it comes to alcohol. Comes of too much dark-matter exposure…' He hefted the demi-john expertly onto his elbow, tipped his head back and drank down a generous amount before passing it to Rei. 'Bloody hell, that's weak… remind me to ask Maji to pop over before we leave and teach you guys how to distil it properly!'

David eyed him from under lowered lids. 'Weak? That stuff had me cross-eyed after the amount you just…' He sniffed as one of the insulated bags was being passed over his lap. 'What is that? It smells amazing... ' He reached in and hauled out a wrapped, steaming packet.

'That, my dear friends, is some of your local crayfish, in Anita's special chowder sauce, wrapped in a flatbread for your eating convenience. Rei here has some pots of her soup, and I believe the pregnant lady is trying to keep all of the ribs to herself…'

'Ribs? As in real meat?' When Rei nodded, Galene leaned forwards and fluttered her eyelashes at her sister. 'You can't be selfish, Ianthe…'

'Watch me.' But she snagged two dripping portions and allowed her sisters to pounce. 'The sauce is incredible…'

'That'd be mom's,' Rei added proudly. He snagged a portion for himself as the bag did the rounds. 'The adults,' he mumbled around a mouthful, 'are around that huge firepit further down the beach, discussing the weighty matters we're all caught up in. We saw you lot lounging around on your own and thought we'd be neighbourly…'

'You mean you were barred from the big boys table and thought we could fill you in?' Morgan asked.

'Ooh. Busted,' Mamoru told Rei with a smirk. 'Well… we're staying to help with the power supply, and we wanted to know a little more about your metanoid infestation…'

'When you put it like that,' Erik muttered, 'I want to reach for bug spray…'

'If it was only that simple,' Morgan replied. 'We're still trying to find a reliable test that doesn't involve deadly force.'

'The main problem is we just don't have the equipment,' Ianthe added in between licking barbeque sauce off her fingers. When Morgan leaned over to do the same, she pushed him away with a laugh. 'Stop that!' she slapped his hand lightly. 'Get yourself sticky!' Ignoring the laughter from her companions she continued. 'The kind of machines we'd need are only found on industrialised planets - and mostly for checking spaceship hulls for structural integrity. They're not exactly man-portable or suitable for use on living tissue.'

'What about the nibelung?' David asked. 'You have two, don't you? Maybe they know more than Yngwie. Not that he ever tells us anything. You know, for an alien he does a remarkable impersonation of a disgruntled teenager…'

'No sex for over a hundred years probably doesn't help,' Liam opined, earning a thump on the arm from Dione. 'What? _I'd_ be grumpy…'

'You'd be grumpy if you went without for a _day_,' his twin told him.

'At least I don't head for the self-service counter,' Liam shot back.

Rei poked Mamoru in the side.

'Sounds like you and Wataru,' he joked.

'You've got a brother?' Liam grinned whilst fending off a slap from his. 'So… ever get the urge to just strangle the annoying twat?'

'Oi!' Erik pouted, and grumbled under his breath whilst glaring at his twin.

Mamoru smirked back. 'All the time - we're twins too, though we just look a lot alike - we're not monos.'

'That's one hell of a knife scar…' Halia, the quietest of the girls, leaned forward. 'What happened?'

'Hallie!' Galene tugged at her sister. 'I'm sorry. She sometimes just puts her big feet in it…'

'No biggie.' Mamoru shrugged. 'Someone went for Wataru - my brother - and I kind of got in the way.' His hand crept up self-consciously to straighten his eyepatch.'

'That's not recent - you must have been very young,' Hallie said softly.

'Nine,' he replied brusquely. When she flinched a little at his tone he winced. 'Sorry. It's okay. I'm used to it.'

'The loss, or the reaction?' she asked. 'Can't be easy, people pointing fingers…' She smiled, the gesture showcasing that same incandescent smile that he'd weaponised himself over the years. 'You'd be almost unbearably pretty otherwise, I think. It gives you more of an edge.'

'Hey, hey!' Dione mimed a "sorry" at Mamoru. 'Stop flirting with the underage boy!'

'I wasn't flirting!'

'Oh… you _so _were. Do you _want _him to die on the end of father's sabre?'

'Which one…?' Mamoru muttered. 'They'd _both _kill me. But I think I'm safe. We're kind of cousins, so…'

Rei's spit take almost hit Erik, and he waved an apology as he tried to recover his composure and fended off a helping hand. 'Seriously? In _your _family?'

Mamoru ignored him. 'So. Metanoids. Specifically this new thing with taking over corpses - what is that about? We talked to both Mimay and Freya and that's news to them as well. They know them as a basically humanoid -'

'Nibelungoid…' Rei interjected.

Mamoru carried on with only a slight eyeroll, '- lifeform that falls square into the uncanny valley - like their features were sculpted by a blind puppeteer, Mimay says. Very stiff features, not very expressive, and like wearing armour - though that might be part of them. A machine lifeform from the previous universe, according to Freya, and she mentioned something about the nibelung creating bodies for them, which makes me think the black cloud thingy that attacked Dad and the rest was their natural form…'

Morgan choked on a crayfish wrap. 'Previous universe?' he spluttered once David had almost flattened him by slapping him on the back. 'As in "before the big bang"?'

'More "before the expansion after the contraction at the end of the previous universe.".' A light contralto called out from the twilight behind them. Freya stepped out of the shadows and dropped gracefully between Mamoru and Rei, smiling a tiny, enigmatic smile at the group. 'Hello.'

'You shouldn't be out alone,' David grumbled, holstering his pistol. Like the rest of them, he stared openly at the dainty little nibelung.

'I'm not,' Freya replied lightly. She nodded as the glowing metal ball hovered behind Rei. 'Even if your people weren't constantly on guard, I had Boreas watching me.' She smiled again and continued. 'The universe cycles endlessly through aeons; energy - the true state of matter - passing from the crunch of one to the expansion of the next. The dark matter and more primal zero-point energy of this universe is a remnant of that previous state. The nibelung originated there as well, and our legends say we fled something darker than black in that universe - the Lords of Shadow.'

'Metanoids,' Rei offered helpfully, one hand resting gently on the motherball.

'Yeah. I think I can work that out,' David drawled. 'But what are they?'

'Rei? A light?'

Rei duly obliged, focussing one of the Motherball's glowing gauges where Freya directed. She waved her hand in front of it, her shadowy fingers playing on the sand. 'We see them as this…' she joined her hands together to form the shadow of a fluttering bird on the sand, 'but the shadows on the wall are not real. They are shadows cast by the light of this universe, and we can never truly see what casts them. Truthfully, from what we read in the ruins on Niflheim, I'm not sure we'd _want _to… And like shadows…' She nodded to Rei who changed the position of the beam so that her hands created a more formless, wriggling mass of shadowy finger-tentacles '...that form can change, even though the thing that casts them does not. And shadows…' She moved her hands until her shadowy fingers touched and then merged with the shadow cast by Morgan's arm. She fell silent, watching them with her large eyes as they worked it out for themselves.

'Can they take over the living?' Ianthe asked, a hand protectively on her bump.

Freya tilted her head on one side, considering. 'I'm not sure. They're so inimical to life that our legends say that they can't stand to be close to it for long. It's as though living things give out an energy that they can't tolerate. It causes them to break down, lose their forms. That's why they mostly appear as armoured warriors - the armour is holding them together. Without that, or a corpse to take over, I think they're actually rather protean in nature.'

'Protean?' Erik whispered to his brother.

'Can't keep a shape,' Rei told him helpfully. 'Which fits with that black cloud.'

'There were a lot of references to shadows in the ruins on Niflheim,' Mamoru mused. 'I guess we now know what that means…'

'Doesn't give us any clues as to how to kill them,' Morgan pointed out. 'It took how many of those fancy weapons to get rid of one of them? Only the captain's gun can take a reboot out, and even then it takes a couple of shots, by which time they're on top of you… If I'm leaving Ianthe here, I'd like to know we've got some hope of stopping these things.'

Rei and Mamoru exchanged smug looks. 'I think the grown-ups - and I use that term very loosely,' Mamoru said, 'have something there. Mimay went digging in her old nibelung gear for a weapon - non-functional but some kind of heirloom? Our Brains Trust are going over it to see if there's something they can use. She thinks it might disrupt their cellular integrity - the bonds that hold them together. If so it's a modular component that just slaps into our cosmo pistols to modulate the energy frequency.'

'Can I see?' Dione asked. Mamoru handed her his handgun, and watched whilst she turned it over to examine it from all sides, the others crowding in to look. 'It's heavier than I thought it would be.'

Mamoru took it back and reholstered it. 'Packs a punch as well - for an energy weapon it's got a hell of a kick. This one's modelled on a standard Japanese model from the Twentieth Century. Yattaran - our first mate - has been passing them out as they upgrade them. It's not quite up to the power of dad's cosmo dragoon, but it's close.'

'You don't carry?' Galene asked Rei, who was notably holsterless.'

'Don't need it,' he told them. 'Not with your field down.'

'Yeah… what's with that? The captain says if you're around it needs to stay down?' Morgan eyed him up and down. 'Do you have prosthetics or something?'

'Something,' Rei replied enigmatically. He laid a hand on the motherball and smiled when it pulsed slightly under his touch. 'But it's not like it's going to be much help, is it? Now we just have to figure out how to find the infiltrators - not stop them.'

'Too much to ask that someone gets a sick feeling in their stomach if one walks by?' Ianthe asked.

'Too much daytime vid-watching, sis?' Hallie teased. 'Expecting Dav here to clutch his head and fall to the ground groaning in pain?' They all laughed as David proceeded to demonstrate.

'It's not beyond the bounds of possibility.' All of the group turned to look at Freya once the giggles subsided. Facing a row of suddenly sobered faces she continued. 'Our kind of life and theirs don't mix well, remember? But it's more likely we'd make _them _feel unwell…'

'Unwell?' Morgan asked, 'or angry?' As though a thought had just occurred to him he placed an arm over Ianthe's vast expanse of belly protectively. 'If they hate and reject us so much… if we're so much of an anathema that they want to destroy us, what would they think of a new life being brought into the world?'

None of them had an answer, not even the normally glib Rei.

* * *

'The boys seem to be getting on with the locals.' Hannibal stood just inside the circle of light cast by the large bonfire behind them, Selen at his side, watching the group of youngsters further down the beach, shadowy figures made visible by their own smaller fire. Occasionally the wind eddied and carried voices and laughter their way, barely audible over the hum and buzz of chatter from behind them. 'Are you happy that they'll be safe?'

'Rei needs to get out of his comfort zone more, and he can take care of himself. Mamoru's a crack shot and quite adept hand to hand, so no, neither Harlock nor I is particularly worried. And Freya…. Well, she's a nibelung and we've no real idea what they're capable of, do we?'

'Against these metanoids?'

'Ah. Now that's a whole different question. Against humans - or even machinners - I'd give the edge to our youngsters. How do you fight shadows?'

'With light, usually,' Hannibal replied. 'Except that's also what gives them their strength. We can only fight darkness with darkness, and I have no idea what that will do…'

'The photonic weapons the Gaia Sanction used on us didn't exactly prove that effective.'

Both turned as Kei approached them, glasses in hand. 'The local brew - according to Harlock a nice fruit punch…' She handed them the drinks with a smile. 'The _Arcadia's _dark matter antennae managed to dissipate the output of the Jovian Blaster.'

'By unleashing almost every scrap of dark matter the ship had,' Hannibal pointed out. He took a gulp. 'He's right. Fruity. Did they forget the alcohol?'

Selen took a more cautious sip and coughed. 'Seriously?' Her second was even more tentative.

'My brother's tendency to throw caution to the winds almost destroyed his ship and crew - and sent _him _into some kind of limbo. Even if we had time to set up a plasma-gate network and could lure those ships into range of a gate, their manipulation of dark matter is far more sophisticated. The chances of taking them out are slim.'

'What about the Kaleido Star System?' Kei asked.

'Same problem,' Hannibal replied. 'And that design was Evgeni Zone's… that family never met a corner they didn't cut, or knowingly under-engineer anything. Zone Industries is still the poster child for a total disregard for safety. Anything that powerful should have equally strong safeguards, which were, and I shudder at the memory, woefully lacking. Please note that if Phantom hadn't wrecked it by causing it to overload by firing at a hologramme, it wouldn't have made a second shot without overloading - and that idiot brother of Yama's deployed the bloody thing inside the orbit of Saturn's rings…' he sighed. 'How that moron ever made Fleet Admiral…'

'Yama.' Selen and Kei chorused. They smiled at each other. Kei continued. 'I read the files… just after he took command. Wanted to know what I was dealing with. Isora used him to uncover all sorts of dirty secrets - even down to throwing him to the cougars of the admiralty and political head honchos he needed to leverage. Some of the skirmishes he earned his stars for? All Yama's research for his own term papers, which oddly were never submitted in his final drafts, all of which ended up in his brother's office… Though I love my Harlock for this at least - once he got fed up with being used, he deliberately stopped producing stellar work.' She smiled fondly. 'He does so love those stealth "fuck-you" moments, even now…'

'Comes by it honestly,' Hannibal replied dryly. 'There's no more satisfying feeling than sticking it to an uppity opponent…' He shrugged at their surprised looks. 'You thought I meant Phantom? Oh, he loved it when he could be bothered, but mostly ruining someone's day just by shooting them in the face sufficed. Too bloody lazy to plot a really satisfying gambit.'

'Hardly worth it when you can just get in someone's face and ruin their day just by being yourself.' Nero's voice rumbled behind them. He stood beside Hannibal and nodded a hello. Looking up to where the _Arcadia _squatted on the headland above them, dimly lit by the glow from behind its engines, he watched the tattered pirate flag flutter in the sea breeze against the still crepuscular sky. 'I heard some of that,' he continued. '_Thunderbolt _is not quite in _Arcadia's _league, and we've never weaponised our dark matter array… I'm not even sure how we'll make this work, in practice, if our main battery isn't effective.'

'I trust Harlock to come up with something,' Kei said softly. 'He always does. Talk to him. And Tochiro thinks there's something we can do with the optical cannon, to boost the photonic energy output. By the time we engage with those ships, we'll have a working plan.'

'So sure?' he asked, a wry smile twisting his full lips as she stood firm, meeting his gaze without any hesitation. 'So loyal.'

'So _experienced_,' she corrected. 'I took a chance on him almost twenty years ago, and he's never caused me to regret that decision. He earned that loyalty, and my confidence.'

Nero stared past her at the Arcadia. 'They have that in common at least,' he said, half to himself. 'Harlock - my Harlock - could make you believe that you could follow him into hell and he'd march you right back out again.'

'What a shame it proved to be just bullshit built on self-pity, guilt and self-delusion,' she snapped, before turning on her heel and striding away.

Nero watched her with a puzzled look. 'What did I say?'

Hannibal patted him on the arm. 'The worst thing you could, under the circumstances,' he told him.

Nero sighed. 'Women… I never understand them,' he said. Then remembering belatedly that Selen was standing to one side, watching the proceedings with an amused smile, he tried to pull his foot out of his mouth. 'Present comp…'

'Never mind, captain,' she told him. She handed him her empty glass. 'I rather doubt you'd understand me either, if Kei proves too much for you.' She left to follow Kei, lost to the growing shadows as she moved from the light towards the darkened hall.

Nero turned to Hannibal, who was failing to contain a grin behind his beard. 'You're no help,' he accused.

'Me? I know when to keep my mouth shut, 'Hannibal replied dryly. 'You however - you never married, did you?'

Nero pantomimed a shudder. 'Now why would I do something so monumentally stupid?' He sent a glance over in the direction of his young crew, laughing and joking around the more distant fire, now dying down to red embers flickering like fireflies in the breeze. 'Daughters are hard enough to deal with, even when they're not my own flesh.'

'They're _Harlocks…' _Hannibal pointed out. 'If they're giving you trouble, you only have yourself to blame there.' His own gaze however was notably not on the three sisters, but on the young woman lying now with Morgan's head in her lap.

'She's almost as stubborn as they are,' Nero told him, his voice softened and huskier than usual. 'They come by that from both of you it seems. I remember Miranda, although we only met a few times. I often envied Harlock Maya - she was a match for him in temper and spirit… but I also envied your more domestic lifestyle. Miranda had - and Ianthe has - a quiet strength and intelligence that's sometimes too subtle for most people to appreciate. Your mother for one, if I remember rightly.'

'You do. But it seems _Morgan's _capable of appreciating it…'

Nero laid a hand on his old friend's arm sympathetically. 'He adores her. I wouldn't have countenanced his suit otherwise. I understand if it hurts, but they would both like to get to know you.'

'Maybe later,' Hannibal said quietly. 'Funny. I understand my brother's response to my actions more clearly now… Though I don't feel the urge to try and break Morgan's jaw, strangely.'

'Your brother never liked sharing,' Nero pointed out. 'He'd probably have tried to flatten _Tochiro _for shagging Maya…' He slapped Hannibal on the back. 'Enough maudlin introspection, Okita. Tomorrow we sail off to meet our fate, whatever that may be. Tonight, that calls for something a little stronger than that piss my crew brew up. Thanks to Harlock, we have some decent whiskey from your brother's extensive stores - a personal present that shouldn't be drunk alone…'

'Phantom would disagree with you,' Hannibal pointed out, letting himself be led back to the hall.'

'See my earlier comment about not sharing,' Nero replied with a smile. 'But we'll raise one to his memory, and to the little guy and other long-lost friends… and you can tell _me _all about what happened when he found out you'd married his "widow"… I mean… I'm curious… how did Maya take his return from the dead?'

'About as well as could be expected,' Hannibal drawled. 'Almost shot him in the face, chucked a vase at his head and threatened to castrate him with a spatula…'

Nero chuckled. 'And you wonder why _I _never married…'


	14. Chapter 13

It wasn't often I had the chance to see my ship from the outside. We rarely landed, it being a major energy drain to get this beast of a ship out of a gravity well (and the fact that on the ground we're a kilometre long sitting duck.) Even docked in Deathshadow Island, we tended to exit via a boarding tube, and the wet dock wasn't exactly set up with a viewing gallery. Inside its kilometre long hull it enveloped me almost the same way the gravity cloak did. Outside, I stood small and insignificant compared to the vast, dark, nacreous hull that steamed wisps of dark matter even at rest.

You might think that at night, these wispy black streamers would be invisible.

You'd be wrong.

Occasionally red lightning flickered across the hull, sometimes leaping the gap between me and the ship, to snap and crackle painlessly around me. I paused at the foot of the hangar ramp and placed a gloved hand on the surface of the hull, to watch the interplay of the blue lightning that tended to gather around me, with the red that sparked off the exterior hull.

Over the sterncastle that housed the captain's quarters in a charming replica of an ancient galleon's wooden backside over the ultra high-tech glow of the ship's manoeuvring engines, a tall flagpole stood proud, the black jolly roger fluttering in the breeze. Up close the flag's enormous - takes at least three men to haul it down if you're so minded. And no, I've no idea how the hell it isn't just whipped off or burned to a crisp when we enter or leave atmosphere, or exceed reasonable speeds. The pole should snap like a dry twig, or the damn flag should be torn free. Somehow, it isn't. Another of the ship's little mysteries - another of which I entered the vessel intent on finding.

At the top of the ramp the black bird swooped down from the girders high above the hangar deck and landed with his usual lack of grace on my shoulder. After sticking his beak right next to my ear and telling me in no uncertain terms what he thought of me leaving him alone for over a week, he settled down to preen, his beak clacking noisily as he tried to coordinate its awkward length.

'Leave it for later,' I told him as I walked, reaching a hand up to clamp my fingers around that massive beak. 'You'll only fall off again.' It just _caaarked _at me and then launched itself off my shoulder, to land ungracefully on Ali's as he walked towards me.

'Have you been slipping food to him again?' The bird nuzzled Ali's cheek with his beak and gave me a glare out of its visible beady black eye.

'Me?' Ali asked innocently. 'Don't know what you mean…' He slapped an enquiring beak away from his front pocket, as the bird almost over balanced trying to lower its beak down on that impossibly long neck to reach. 'Glad I caught you though.' He fell into step beside me as we walked. 'There's a bit of trouble brewing…'

'When isn't there? Settling it is Yattaran's job.'

'Ah… well…' he scratched at a long sideburn. 'About that… Seems talk of those metanoid reboots being somewhat anti-social made the rounds…'

'On this ship?' Whilst the general mood on the _Arcadia_ was much better than in my predecessor's day, we do seem to attract a lot of people with somewhat "quirky" personalities, most of them don't mix well with others. As long as they want to be here and pull their weight, I don't mind. Most of us carry around a lot of baggage, and not everyone wants to share. All I ask of my crew is that they have each others' backs - and mine. The rest is their own business.

However I don't take on the kind of hard-cases that give pirates a bad name, although as I approached the engine room with Ali scuffling reluctantly just behind me, the sounds coming from inside might make me wonder if I'd done just that.

* * *

I could have predicted the personalities at the heart of the argument that was rapidly escalating into a brawl. Maji, Cai, Doscoi and Yattaran, and the latter was building up to a shoving match with a group of brawny but not too smart guys led by Sabu and Yasu. Martinez and Franz, I noticed, were off to one side, leaning against the wall, arms folded watching to see how it played out. Figures. Like Ali and Kei they'd come aboard under the last captain, and tended to be a bit more guarded in their involvement in such scuffles. Unless I ordered them in or things got too bloody, they'd stay out of it.

'Ali.'

I didn't have to say much more than that. These days he can read my mood almost as well as Kei can.

Why else would I put up with the insubordinate, stubborn, obnoxious son of a bitch?

He shrugged his shoulder to dislodge the bird, which flew up into the ceiling girders with a squawk, cracked his neck a couple of times, cracked his knuckles and strode into the middle of the fray bellowing 'Oi! Break it up…' He hauled Sabu back by the collar of his jacket before the beefy paw of my first mate could connect with his face. That paw connected with Ali's chest instead, though for all his bulk and belligerence, Yattaran isn't much of a fighter barehanded. All it got from Ali was an "oof" as he pushed Sabu out of the way.

Doscoi was squaring off to a bloody-nosed Yasu and two of the gunners, but Cai and Maji - two of the more isolated crew - just stood by looking rather miserable. 'Captain on deck!' Ali shouted. 'For fuck's sake - what is with you guys? Yattaran - you're supposed to take care of this sort of shit, not be throwing punches in the middle of it.'

'They started it!' my rather rotund first mate shoved his thick, baroque glasses up his nose and glared at the small crowd. 'Wondering if we were some kind of imposters! Could ask these twats the same. Fucking. Question!' His voice rising as he spoke, he bellowed out the last word so loud I winced.

'Yeah.' Doscoi wasn't the most talkative member of the crew - some days he made Maji look like a chatterbox. 'Accusing us of being spies or saboteurs... ' He stalked towards Yasu until he was face to face with the bulky crewman. 'I was _fixing _it you thick cu…'

'Enough!'

I don't like to raise my voice. Generally because it worries people far more when you don't… they keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. But this needed nipping in the bud, and hard. 'Doscoi?' I added more quietly. I folded my arms and waited.

'Captain. There was a problem with the water supply. Cai said there was something off in the showers, so I shut it down whilst…'

'He was messing around with the coolant overflow!' Yasu jabbed a finger at the snarling engineer.

'Someone had _already _opened it, you retard!'

The pair tried to go for each other, but a nod from me brought the slacking pair on the sidelines into the fray to break them up.

'The rest of you back to either your quarters or your duties,' I told them. 'Yattaran - you'd better have a good explanation as to how this got into an us versus them situation when I get round to talking to you. Maji - Doscoi - wait over at the side with Ali - we'll check the water supply. Cai?'

I took the pilot over to one side. 'How the hell did you get rounded up?' I asked, although I could guess.

'Mutterings in the mess,' he said quietly. He's about my age, but somehow always seems younger. He's quiet and a little shy, and never really got over his lover dying in the plague a decade ago. Matt and Cai had been devoted to each other, and to see him alone was a knife to the heart some days, as though he'd had a body part amputated. 'Plus someone opened his big mouth about seeing me "lurking" talking to Doscoi…'

'So the four of you were checking up on the water supply, and with gossip running rampant…?'

'Something like that. Might not have been so bad but both Yattaran and Doscoi took offence, and… well…'

Ali strolled casually over to me, hands in his pockets. 'That's just the start of it, you know,' he opined. 'Tochiro's been going over the records looking for a possible mole, but this lot - they will take matters into their own hands if they think they have to.'

'Goes with the territory,' I replied. 'You need to trust the man next to you in our line of work. The damage even one infiltrator could do to us doesn't bear thinking about. We've got a community built on trust and self-interest. It's a delicate balance. If there is a spy, I want them caught fast, and terminated.'

'No matter who it is?'

'Ali… were you not paying attention? If someone isn't who they say they are, that person is dead, and has been for some time. Now - I need Yattaran in Engineering, so take Franz and Martinez and make sure you keep the rest of them either busy or quiet until I can look into this. Call Kei if you have to, but make sure the crew don't get too much free time to worry at this.'

'I'll have that dozy pair from Heavy Meldar hopping around so fast they won't have time to breathe,' Ali grumbled. 'I know bloody well who shoots their mouths off without thinking around here…' He stomped off calling for Franz, and they vanished in the direction of the bridge.

* * *

I knelt beside Doscoi as he pointed out where the intake ducting for the water supply on the port side had been linked by a small tube to the coolant ducts. 'Almost impossible to see unless you go looking. And if Cai here hadn't been taking a shower when he did…'

'How bad is it?'

'Well it's a big tank, and was full, and we caught it pretty quick. The starboard tank's fine, but I can't do anything with this until we can dump the tank… and I'm not doing it into the bay. We need to vent it to upper atmosphere so it disperses and land again so we can refill after we've scrubbed it through. That's just to make it usable - I wouldn't use it as drinking water until I can completely decontaminate it.'

'Fine. We go up and come back down, A couple of hours to scrub?' I reached out and picked up the disconnected tube. 'This is from the fuel intake system for the space wolves…'

He plucked it from my hands and scowled at me. 'Longer. Finding this was easy, but whoever did this didn't just want to make us sick… I had a hunch this was too easy to find, so I went looking…' he pointed to another pipe, further along the wall. 'The bastard fed water back into the coolant system. We've lost the coolant for turrets seven through thirteen, and one of the dimensional oscillator cannon arrays.'

'Can't you just flush it and replace?' Cai asked.

Yattaran shook his head. 'Nope. Water and that stuff are a bad mix… it causes it to polymerise - gunks up the works. We shut down the system - thankfully we weren't using the guns, so it was pooled in the section closest to this- but we need to strip down those ducts and clean them, or we risk the entire port battery exploding. That'll take days...'

'We don't have days. I need to intercept those Phantasma…' I stood up and stared at my three engineers, all of whom looked grim. 'How long to clear the water tank?'

'Won't take long to skip up and vent, but before we refill it, we need to clean it - even the small amount of coolant that leaked in would be nasty. Six hours minimum, then two hours to refill - but we'd need to desalinate as we fill up…' Maji said.

Too long… 'Why not use the seawater to flush through the system?'

They all looked at me. Maji grinned. 'Scour it through at high pressure - we can do that. At that concentration it should be safe to flush through into the sea, right?'

Tentative nods. 'Might work…' Yattaran muttered.

'It's hardly standard procedure, and you'd need to replace the intake and outflow afterwards just for the pressure damage,' Doscoi pointed out. 'But it would save time. We can rig up a desalinator en route… clean up the water as it exits the tanks? We'd need to replace the system in dock when we get the chance though. Saltwater's murder on the pipework and those ain't on the self-repair system.'

'It'll do for now. You can also figure out the coolant problem en route,' I told them. 'Don't get creative - just print up more ducting and swap it out.' I wasn't wearing gloves and a stinging sensation in my fingers made me look at the hand I was holding the pipe in. Already my fingers were red and sore, and I handed the thing quickly back to Maji. 'How are we doing for water overall?'

'Starboard tank's clean, and pretty full. If we switch that over to supply the mess and warn everyone not to drink from the toilets we'll manage,' Yattaran answered. 'Don't worry,' he added with a rough chuckle, slapping me on the back. 'The captain's luxury bathroom is also on a separate tank…'

'Well that's a relief. I'd hate to be the one to tell Kei half hour showers were off the table for the duration…' I drawled. All three engineers chuckled. 'Cai - tell Ali to gather the crew in an hour on the bridge?' He nodded once, and left.

'You think he's on the level?' Yattaran asked, absently scratching his arm. Like myself he had a small red rash forming. 'Dammit, forgot how much that stuff stings…'

'Fetched Doscoi didn't he?' Maji shrugged. 'I don't like this. Second guessing whether people you've known for years have been converted.'

'Maybe he was framing him?' Yattaran suggested. Doscoi looked a little sick at that.

I frowned. 'Or maybe the plan's a lot more subtle - sow distrust and fear at a low level, you disrupt the crew far more than one big event which may or may not work. Was the idea to poison us? Or just make us a little sick so we'd be undermanned? Was the job to contaminate the water or the coolant - the latter's more dangerous to us, it could have been an accidental leakage and the pipe we found was a first attempt? Our infiltrator could be either as cunning as all hell, or a total incompetent.'

'Takes one to know one, eh, captain?' Yattaran asked with a wink. I wasn't sure I wanted to answer that one, and Maji and Doscoi both stared at him in horror. 'First Mate!' Doscoi spluttered eventually.

'What? Whaddid I say?' You could almost see the cogs turning like the pulley systems on our walls. 'Oh. I meant _spy_, you dopey pair. Er… captain, that came out wrong…'

'No shit…' Maji muttered. He rolled his eyes as he strolled past, but his heart quite obviously wasn't in it, and me… I couldn't even summon up an answering smirk. Not this time.

I left the bandanna squad to it, already arguing over where to start, and made my way to speak to the other brainy swot on the crew.

* * *

The ship could be a powder keg some days, given the mix of personalities and the general issues with having between forty and sixty people, most of whom are somewhat lacking in social skills, living in close proximity in a high pressure environment and rubbing up against similarly lacking individuals. But no matter how fraught the rest of the ship got I could usually rely on getting some peace and quiet in the central computer room.

It's not that the crew can't get along - mostly, they do. Or that they can't or won't pull together - mostly, they do.

But when things do cook off, they can get noisy.

And that's on a good day.

The room is massive, holding a circle of data banks linked to a soaring central column by trailing cables and conduits that resembles nothing so much as an ancient tree in a dark shady glade. Or given the man-made construction and the overall gothic feel of the ship, an ancient cathedral, which made a certain kind of sense when I learned my predecessor had been a somewhat lapsed Catholic prep school boy…

As I took my usual seat on the largest of the "roots" trailing across the floor, it occurred to me that I hadn't actually asked to see the _Thunderbolt's _equivalent. I idly wondered if it was the same design.

_Well… maybe a bit less retro, and not quite so obviously weird-ass organic._

'Nice to know you're awake…'

_Ooh. Touchy. And for the record, I can't see everything, you know. The automatics take care of the day to day stuff. If I stuck my nose into everything twenty-four seven the power drain would be off the charts… But I'm sorry. I did drop the ball a bit. I was going over the archive footage._

I sighed. It was always hard to take the little guy to task. Something I suspected he relied on a lot when alive. I basked for a moment in the blessed silence and the cool breeze from the air conditioner that kept the databanks cold. 'We've got a problem…'

_You think?_

'You know, if I was planning this, this is how I'd do it. Sow dissent and distrust, plague us with small but annoying - but not too deadly - acts of sabotage. Set the crew against each other, and make me hurt by whittling away at me piece by piece…'

_You think this is personal?_

I thought for a moment. 'I think it's a distraction. There'll be more - at least one, and I want to smoke them out. Did you find anything?'

He called up a hologramme with the pictures from several personnel jackets showing. One was Cai. The others… 'Not Doscoi - he's clean. Cranky, but I'd bet good money he's not been replaced.'

Me? Well… I could be a little moody… Yasu. Rick. Kei. Ali. Doc Luna. The latter holding a small tabby cat. 'Luna? Or the cat?' I asked, making a vain attempt at levity. 'You can't seriously…'

_Not out loud, Harlock. That's why the speakers aren't on._

I hadn't even noticed he was talking to me directly, I was so used to it.

_These are the most likely candidates the algorithm throws up as possibles based on behaviour cues, but it throws up a few false positives. As you might expect._

I stared at the floating headshots. Kei? Not a chance. Me? I was pretty sure I'd know about it... Ali I'd rule out, simply because there was no way in hell anyone could fake being that annoying. And Luna? Tougher call, but she rarely left the ship or Deathshadow Island.

Yasu had been one of the men who'd climbed Mount Gun Frontier ahead of me to try and gain a berth on the Arcadia, and along with Sabu and some skinny guy whose name escaped me, had taken a long drop off the hangar clamps for their pains - thankfully on a low-g moon with the Arcadia's artificial grav field wrapped around the mountain. When I'd gone back there a few weeks later, I'd talked them into joining up. Not the sharpest tool in the box, but he was loyal.

Rick was from Mistral - an agri-world targeted early in the war by the machinners. He'd lost an arm in the battle, and his heavily pregnant wife had been on the same transport as Cai and Matt, albeit rather less than willing. The SDF had wagged a finger at him for wanting to carry on flying, so he'd jumped at the chance when I offered him a customised space wolf. Hell, I'd reasoned if Harlock and myself could fly combat with one eye apiece, why not? He'd had my back so often - like Cai - that I'd lost count. His wife was friends with Kei and Selen and our kids hung out together.

That piping had come from a space wolf…

'Fuck.'

_My sentiments exactly…_

'Any luck on a test?'

_Even using the data Khal's people sent over, I'm nowhere close. I'm an engineer, not a psychologist. _

'A gap in that massive brain of yours? I might need to look out for swooping pigs…'

_Hardy-har. Good luck head-shrinking this lot anyway. If there's a bell-shaped curve for normal human personality types, most of us are on one end or the other of it._

_Oh - before I forget - Mimay was looking for an old weapon from Niflheim… she was rummaging around in our old storage boxes last time I checked. Dunno if she found anything - she headed back to your quarters lickety-spit. Oh - and she was on an encrypted line to Freya as well, but cut that short when that pretty-boy Yngwie showed his face. I didn't know she could turn a whiter shade of pale…_

'Another one who's adept at running away from unpleasant encounters?' He didn't answer. 'Where is she hiding?'

_If she's not draped over your chaise-longue I'm guessing she'll be soaking in your hot tub._

Even though I'd not taken the eyepatch off all day I'd got the beginnings of a thumping headache. 'Joy. A soggy, naked nibelung drowning her sorrows in my wine cellar…'

_Relax. I don't think she's emptied the contents into your hot tub_…

Now there was an image I'd like to shake. I strode out of the computer room shaking my head, wondering - and not for the first time - if the last captain had had days like these.

* * *

Mimay wasn't, mercifully, floating naked in a hot tub full of full of Schloss Greifenstein's last Riesling vintage, but she _was _making inroads on a bottle of burgundy. Not her first of the day either, looking at the two bottles already lying on the floor next to the chaise-longue.

'You do know the wine-cellar isn't on the self-repair circuit?'

She looked at me over the rim of a crystal goblet and then hiccuped very quietly. Dozens of tiny green glowing "fireflies" scattered in a cloud around her, then settled back to orbiting their languid, pale sea-green star. 'Okay. That's it. I'm cutting you off,' I told her, suiting action to words and removing the half bottle that was left. I placed it out of reach on my desk and then knelt next to her.

'I do _not _get intoxicated,' she told me primly, and very deliberately. Another very cute hiccup escaped her and I had a face full of tiny green flames that I had to brush away. I took the goblet out of her fingers and placed it on the table next to us.

'Of course you don't,' I replied soothingly. 'But you're in here, hiding from an old friend, and making inroads into a _very _expensive and rare _Mazoyères-Chambertin_ 2857, and I'm pretty sure Hannibal will actually cry if I tell him how cavalierly you're treating it… For fuck's sake, Mimay, at least head for the _Château Mouton Rothschild_ 2860… we still have six cases of that.'

The corners of her tiny mouth tilted upwards in the beginnings of a smile. 'We liberated that from a small colony where one of the original Gaia Sanction council fled to avoid the final stages of the war. Harlock said it hadn't travelled well…'

'Which would explain why it's gathering dust?' I patted her delicate long-fingered hand gently. 'Such snobbery from a man who swilled down Andromedan Red Bourbon like it was water…' I took her hand in mine and felt her chilly fingers close around my own. 'Having met Yngwie, I can tell you he's a bit of an arse in my opinion, but you're worth ten of him, so why are you avoiding the twat? If he gives you any trouble, I'll have Mamoru punch him again. Seriously, he can't even fight off a teenage boy…'

She smiled fondly and laid her other hand on my cheek. 'It seems when forced to confront my past decisions, my courage fails me. My kind… can be very judgmental…'

I bit my tongue. 'To throw your own advice back at you, perhaps you _need _to face this? But it can wait. If you can refrain from burping fireflies for a few minutes, I'd like to know what you might have to fight these "lords of shadow". Anything you and Freya can think of, no matter how stupid, it might be worth a shot. Talk to me whilst I get changed - this planet's a sauna, and I refuse to address the crew feeling sweaty.'

She perched on the steps of the covered hot tub whilst I showered - I'd learned long ago not to expect much in the way of privacy. She'd found my initial blushes endlessly amusing, but the nibelung had been a tactile race, and deprived of the company of her own kind, she happily sought out anyone willing to snuggle given half a chance. How the hell she'd coped during a hundred years with only Harlock for company I'd never know, because she was all over myself and Kei as soon as she realised we were a softer touch, and she and Luna between them would fill the bloody ship with cats if I let them. One of the current crop of three was curled up on her lap purring as she stroked it, when I walked out of the drying field. 'Did you find what you were looking for?' I asked as I grabbed a pair of pants.

She picked up a small object from beside her, and handed it to me, the cat taking a lazy swipe at it on the way past. I turned it over in my hands, puzzled. 'I thought you were looking for a weapon?' The object in question was about six inches square and half an inch thick: a stone tablet with strange markings on all of its surfaces. 'Pictograms?'

'An old form of our language - ideogrammatic, and each symbol carries a multitude of meanings, especially in relation to each other. This… is a sophisticated cypher, and also part of a silicon storage device. My brother sent it to me before…'

Before he'd been sequestrated by one of a rebel group of Nibelung who apparently wanted to bring back the good old days… I noted one of the symbols resembled the spinning-top design of the Phantasma ships. One I knew as the Nibelung symbol for "eternal light", another meant "never-ending darkness". Beyond that my knowledge was pretty limited - and those two I knew only because they appeared on the side of our dimensional oscillator cannon… 'Does it hold any information that might be useful?'

I handed it back, since the bathroom wasn't that warm, and I wanted my sweater. Whilst I pulled that over my head she replied. 'It might, if I can work with Tochiro on translating it. The problem is more that the language tends to be a little… poetic. Translation even into my language isn't easy, as so much of what it describes is metaphorical and couched in terms that make no sense to anyone from a different time. It's hard to explain…'

'Like Hannibal talking about vid shows, films or literature lost forever in the Homecoming War?'

She nodded, and passed over my eyepatch. The cat on her lap saw this as an enticing toy, and batted at the dangling leather thong, snagging it out of her hands and then running off with it, sprinting out of the open door and into the room beyond. I sighed. 'Never mind, I'll grab a spare.'

She followed me out. 'Language relies on a shared experience. Without it… without that spirit of the age, words are devoid of a proper context. You know the symbols cast into the side of the cannon? I saw your fingers linger over those. They have a simple, specific meaning, but they also hold the key to the scientific principles involved in the making of that weapon.'

'So there's a very real possibility that Alberich sent you this specific piece…'

'To prevent Loki's people from using it.' She clutched it to her chest in both hands and bowed her head so that her hair floated over it. 'Freya had access to some of the main databases whilst she was linked to the system. Her knowledge is greater than mine. It mentions the oscillator energy specifically in connection with that pictograph of the Phantasma. I'm not sure we'll have time…'

'Do what you can between you,' I told her. 'If there is something in there, it'll be a bonus, but I won't be counting on it.' I paused. 'Mimay - this Yngwie - do you trust him?'

She looked up, startled. 'Why would you ask?'

I shrugged. 'Not sure. But Loki had people all over key projects in the final days didn't he? Did it ever seem possible that the Deathshadow Project escaped his notice?'

'I…' She shook her head, making her hair ripple and flutter around her, as diaphanous as the veils covering her flightsuit. 'No. But… _Yngwie_?'

'Maybe he's just an asshole. It's just something about him doesn't sit right. If you do face him before we lift-off, don't go alone.' I settled my gun belts on my hip and grabbed a jacket. 'Get that thing scanned and sent to Freya. We've got a couple of hours to spare - I've got to give a pep talk to my crew and then explain to our hosts that we might need to catch up to them.'

...and before that, a quick warp radio link back to Tabito. I wasn't too worried about Nami, Taro and Wataru - they were surrounded by a cadre of Selen's finest, after all. But they were probably worried about us, and it wouldn't hurt to check in.

That was the easy part. Working out what to say to the crew? Not so much...


	15. Chapter 14

_Thunderbolt_

'...just don't engage until we catch up if you can avoid it. They'll take you to pieces. I've got Tochiro and Mimay working on a modulation to the dark matter shield and on modifications to the main cannon. By their calculations it will take both ships to put a dent in one of the Phantasma.'

After Harlock's hologramatic image had winked out, Yanez turned to Nero with a frown. 'He might be right, but he comes off as a pompous pipsqueak, doesn't he? Who does he think he is?'

'_Captain Harlock_,' Nero drawled. 'Don't let the boy next door looks fool you. He's got a sound head on his shoulders.' He smiled. 'More so than his predecessor, in a way. At least he's polite.' He sat down in the captain's chair with a sigh. 'Rather more worrying is the news about the sabotage on board the _Arcadia_. Once we're in flight grab a couple of men and check out our own systems.'

'Already on it,' Yanez informed him grimly. 'I know we've kept access to the ship to a minimum, but _I'd _rather know _before_ take off…'

Nero took the implied rebuke with a silent twitch of his lips. 'And my dark matter engine?'

'An obsolete museum piece,' replied a girlish, bell-like voice from behind him. 'Did Yngwie bother to upgrade this over the past hundred years? At _all…_?'

'Just reassure me it'll do the job and not blow up in our faces and I'll settle for that,' Nero told her, without turning around to look at her. He smiled at her heartfelt sigh. 'We're all a little past our best, Freya. The _Thunderbolt _doesn't have the advantages the _Arcadia _does, of a dedicated AI that can respond instinctively to the ship's needs.'

'And remodel the damned hull on a whim…' Yanez added. He watched, enraptured, as the _Arcadia_ soared into the sky with a rumble that made his chest reverberate, on a column of dark matter. 'Lumbers a bit getting out of the gravity well doesn't it? And do we make that much mess?' he asked. 'It looks like a vessel running on fossil fuels with a _really _bad service history…'

Nero slapped him on the shoulder. 'It does seem to be spewing dark matter faster than it can absorb it, doesn't it? But none of these ships ever looked graceful in atmosphere, my friend. It isn't their element. In space however… they are sharks. Elegant, fast, and deadly.'

'They'll be faster than the Phantasma.' Freya perched on the arm of Nero's chair, one foot tapping gently at the side. 'But the trouble is, the Phantasma class ships do not need to keep changing position to fire on their opponents - those "ribbons" carry the weaponry to wherever they need to aim, so they can continue on the same vector. The Deathshadows can move the main arrays on the ratchet system - and fire in multiple directions, but have a more linear attack vector. You still have to angle the ship to bring maximum force to bear.'

'I'll worry about that once we're en route,' Nero told her. 'How long before we lift off?'

Outside, the _Arcadia_ was descending onto the surface of the ocean, her massive bulk sending out a large displacement wave as she settled, the red eyes of the skull in her bow seeming to stare straight into the bridge of her sister-ship. Despite the temperature being a comfortable eighteen degrees, Nero shivered, and looked away.

Freya smiled up at him and patted his hand where it lay on the arm of the chair next to her. 'As soon as you have everyone on board, Captain,' she informed him in a teasing tone that sounded as though she was almost about to laugh.

'You,' he replied, 'are entirely too chirpy for a nibelung.' He sighed as he looked over her garb - very short green shorts over pale green leggings, and a cropped top in another shade of sea green. 'And that get-up isn't exactly ship-board regulation…' he pointed out, a little stiffly.

She just smiled up at him. 'Really? If anything causes a rupture bad enough to take out the bridge, it's not as though I'll have time to reach a spacesuit.' She patted his hand again, bounced to her feet and headed back to the dark matter engine with a skip in her stride.

Yanez clapped Nero on the back hard enough to almost stagger the larger man, and ignored the sideways glare this earned him. 'My brother, it might be rather disturbing to see that tiny blue-green heinie in come-fuck-me shorts, but what do you really think _you _can do about it? You're not her father…' He smiled. 'Come to think of it, looks aside, she's older than you are, and despite those big, round wide eyes, if you think there's _anything _innocent about that race, you haven't been paying attention.' He leaned sideways to peer around Nero's larger frame, and grinned admiringly. 'I have to admit - never thought I'd say this but she sure is a lot prettier to look at than Yngwie - and a lot friendlier.'

'I'm not sure _anyone_ thought we'd see anyone prettier than Yngwie,' Liam O'Malley interjected as he strolled past the pair to his station. 'Including Yngwie…'

'How is he?'

Liam shrugged at his captain's question as he ran his hands over the controls. 'Nursing both a headache and a grudge… honestly, sir - if we didn't need him to control the dark matter drive, I'd have left him somewhere where his spite wouldn't poison anyone else. I'm actually relieved to find out that they aren't _all _like that as a species…'

'Nope.' Freya popped her head around the back of Nero's chair and smiled prettily at the red-haired officer. 'Some of them are a _lot _worse…' She tossed her head slightly, causing her silken, gossamer-fine hair to float gently back to her shoulders, which the ends just brushed. 'Because in my admittedly biased opinion, it takes a special kind of innate lack of compassion for an _entire species_ to think using its own children to control dangerous devices that directly manipulate dark matter is a good idea, don't you think?'

'You say that so prettily,' Nero said. 'Yet I have a feeling you'd love to get your hands on those responsible…'

'Raised by pirates,' she replied brightly. 'It rubs off.'

'Maybe we could swap?' Yanez said, a wistful note in his voice. 'We could borrow Mimay for a few months and they could rub some of the edges off Pretty Poison.'

'Wouldn't work,' Freya replied sagely. 'Mimay's as bound to the _Arcadia _as Tochiro is, in her own way. You caught the backlash from the dark matter release - the _Arcadia _was the origin point. You're long-lived because you're living on or near the dark matter engine, but you're not a _part _of the ship the way Harlock, Mimay and Tochiro are.' Her tiny mouth quirked into an oddly feral grin. 'Besides, Harlock would plant one on him the first time he pissed him off.'

'My Harlock or yours?' Nero asked.

'That's the big question isn't it?' Hannibal's voice preceded him onto the bridge as he strode up the stairs.

'Admiral on the Deck!' Nero called out, his wide, full mouth curled into a mischievous grin. 'So how _did _Phantom disentangle himself from the ship?'

'Belay that crap, Khal. I'm a civilian again these days. Thank god. My brother found a loophole that allowed another captain to replace him, hoping to die…'

'Didn't we go to see that opera in Bayreuth?' Nero asked him. 'Or was it that he had to find a woman brave and true to love him?'

'Depends which version you read,' Hannibal replied. 'As it happens the _Arcadia _can function with another captain at the helm, thanks to Tochiro, though it probably helps that Yama exposed himself to a massive dose of unfettered dark matter on Earth _and _was a blood relative. Kodai, however, wasn't so fortunate as either you, me or Harlock, however harsh our fate might feel on long winter nights, Khal. What Harlock and Zero found on board the _Deathshadow Three_ isn't something I'd have wished on my worst enemy.' He sighed. 'And we still have no idea what happened to Komarova…'

'Nothing good I hope,' Nero growled. 'That bitch didn't give Harlock a chance to explain.'

'Be fair, Khal,' Hannibal chided him gently. 'He didn't exactly _ask _for one…' He cleared his throat. 'I just popped over to bring you Tochiro's specs for the upgrades you'll need. Harlock didn't want them sent over the link, just in case.' He handed over a small, brassy, octagonal chip, which Yanez appropriated from Nero's open palm. 'Start with the comms - that way you can upgrade the AI's security en route, and Tochiro can share the data needed to use the self-repair to help with the remodelling. Once you have that programme, the rest is pretty straightforward.'

'Thanks. When are you taking off?'

'About half an hour after I leave here. Morgan's captaining the _Lightning_, I take it?'

Yanez nodded. 'He's young, but one of the best we have. The other captains will be Stiller, Carmaux and Van Guld. With the _Miranda _that gives you five ships, and five hundred men. Would that we had more to spare…'

'It'll be enough. If your intel is up to date, the ground assault will be critical, and we shouldn't encounter anything we can't handle in-system,' Hannibal assured him, a twinkle in his hazel eyes. Yanez snorted.

'Aye, you old fox… you're rather looking forward to this, aren't you?'

Hannibal kept his expression suitably enigmatic, and merely bid them good hunting. After his bootsteps receded down the stairs Yanez folded his arms and grinned at his captain. 'You were right. I like him..'

'Most people do,' Nero replied. He grinned, showing his white teeth. 'I feel a lot better about this knowing the Admiral's around.'

'So this Young Harlock…'

'Pleasant, and a harder nut than he makes out, but he's still an unknown quantity. Mamoru I knew for a long time, before…' he broke off, noticing Freya frowning at him.

'You can trust Harlock, you know,' she told him firmly. 'Hannibal does.'

'Mamoru trusted his _brother_,' Nero pointed out. He waved a hand around to take in the bridge. 'Look where _that _got us…' But he smiled more warmly at her before continuing: 'He reminds me a lot of Mamoru, which is no bad thing. But enough gossip, my dear. When can I have my ship in the sky?'

'When _I've _gone over the damned systems,' Yanez reminded him. He winked at Freya, who laughed with him at Nero's impatient frown. 'Oh my impatient _capitao_... ' he swept a low, elaborate bow and then left the bridge, his laughter lingering behind him.

* * *

_Arcadia_

The lower bridge was large enough to look rather sparsely populated even when all the stations were manned. With the entire crew gathered - bar the handful on the upper gantry - there was room and to spare for them to shuffle around keeping careful distances from each other, casting wary looks at anyone who got too close. The murmurings and rumblings held an ugly undertone that Mamoru couldn't remember ever hearing. Beside him, Rei gripped the railing tightly as he surveyed the group.

'Anything?' Mamoru whispered to his friend.

'Don't rush me. It's tough to see properly since you're _all_ surrounded by dark matter.'

'But it should show up, right?'

'Maybe. There should be a difference…' He grunted. 'Huh. You know… I can tell the new guys from those who were here before your dad took over. Their auras are a much deeper blue… Even Sabu's is kinda wispy, and I _know _how long _he's _been on board…'

'So,' Mamoru leaned on the railing and stared at the muttering throng. 'What exactly are you looking for?'

'Dunno. I guess I'll know when I see it.' He mirrored Mamoru's casual pose, arms on the railing, chin on forearms where they crossed. 'I was hoping for something obvious… red, green…'

'Being shot in the face by an imposter who overhears you talking about it?' someone whispered just behind him.

'Fuck!' Rei leapt upright as though scalded. Next to him, Mamoru sniggered. 'Shit, Ali… someone oughta put a bell on you…'

Ali smirked and slapped him on the back. 'Not paying attention kiddo - even Mamoru here heard me coming, and he's not got your mad skills.'

'There's always someone clomping around up here,' Rei pointed out grumpily. 'But you bloody well meant to do that, so get the fuck outta my face.' He shoved Ali in the chest, apparently with just a fingertip, but the burly crewman grunted and almost stumbled backwards. Rei turned his back on the indignant spluttering. 'You know… it could be a stowaway…' he said hopefully as he laid his chin on his arms again. Somewhere below one of Doc's cats, annoyed at being moved from someone's seat, hissed, spat and streaked across the room and out through the open bulkhead doors.

'On this ship? Some things might slip past Tochiro's sensors,' Ali scoffed, 'But not that. And we all know each other…'

Rei surveyed the assembled pirates as nonchalantly as he could. To his enhanced senses, the wispy blue threads that connected the ship to the crew were only just visible. Proof of life, he'd always thought of them. Although he couldn't tell whether they came from the ship and manifested around the crew, or came from the living and were made manifest by the ship. They pooled and twisted and flared around the men - and a couple of women - like pale flames. Here and there, as he'd pointed out to Mamoru, those flames flared hotter and more strongly around those who'd been on the ship the longest.

Or around Mamoru, whose blue flames flickered across the divide between them from time to time, and licked at the edges of his own more greenish fires.

And it was in following those fiery trails through the bridge that he finally spotted the anomaly he'd been looking for, and he mentally chided himself for not thinking of it earlier. His focus on the aggrieved feline had sent him straight to it...

'Not as well as you'd like,' Rei said softly. He stood up and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

'What do you see?' Mamoru asked in an undertone.

Rei stared down into the lower bridge, trying not to be too obvious. The blue flames moved around the crew as though moved on unseen, unfelt soft winds.

Except where they _didn't_.

There was nothing, outwardly, even to his eyes to differentiate the three crew members he watched from the rest, except that the wispy blue flames seemed to recoil and avoid them, or flutter into nothingness as though they hit an unseen barrier. When he looked deeper, none of the three had an aura.

He risked a sideways glance at his partner in crime, almost relieved to see Mamoru's aura pulsing in time with the soft, almost sub-audible "heartbeat" of the ship.

_Now that I know what to look for, I can see it_…

Rei smiled faintly as Tochiro's voice echoed in his head. _Thank the cat… you know, I think it might have sensed something…_

_Figures. Cats had a rep for thousands of years for being sensitive_…

'Rei?'

Ali's voice brought him back into the outside world. 'Yeah. Right. I need to talk to Harlock…'

'I can get dad,' Mamoru told him. 'But you want to tell us who we're looking at?'

Rei shook his head. 'And start something in here? No. Too many people around and too much damage can be done if guys start shooting, remember?' Then he grinned coldly. 'I might just have a plan…'

* * *

'Absolutely not.'

Rei folded his arms and glared mulishly at his mother and Kei, who stood in front of him, in an identical pose to his own, looking equally stubborn.

'It makes sense,' he told them. Behind him the Motherball pulsed amber. 'No-one asked you,' he told it. 'Ow!' He rubbed his left ass-cheek and glared at the hovering mechanical ball, which somehow managed to convey an air of innocence as it pulsed a soft pale green.

'Bait?' Selen shook her head firmly. 'No.' She smiled at the hovering ball. 'And thank you, my dear' she told it. The ball pulsed a brighter green.

'If nothing else,' Kei added, 'did you consider what would happen if your zero point energy interacted with what is effectively a helium 3 bomb? On board a ship powered by dark matter?'

'Then off the ship,' he suggested, thinking quickly.

'Won't work,' Kei replied. 'Why would they go after you when they're leaving on the ship and you're not? You haven't thought this through. All you have to do is tell Harlock, and they're blown. The trouble is you watch too many movies. Wait to tell Harlock, anyone with half a brain knows it's a trap.'

'But…'

'Rei, she's right. That sort of thing only works in vids. The smart thing to do is tell us who it is, and we'll work on getting them off the ship before we take off.' Selen smiled fondly at him. 'I can't fault your courage here Rei, but the "let the bad guys overhear a conversation" routine is for amateurs. You're smarter than that.' She leaned back against the wall. 'So… on that note, give me an alternative.'

'Selen…'

Selen raised a hand to forestall Kei's objections. 'They all have to learn sometime. He was at least smart enough to bring this to us first. So, Rei: how do we get these infiltrators off the _Arcadia _safely?'

He frowned. 'You'd need a reason to get them off… probably with the rest of the crew so there's no clues that they're being rounded up and cut out of the herd. I'd go with an emergency evacuation?' Both women watched him, not giving anything away. 'Coolant leak into the air con, accidentally set off when Doscoi and co are fixing the system. Get everyone off, then cut these three jokers loose under some pretext. Maybe Kei and her clipboard? No-one messes with _that _routine… More than anyone's life's worth.'

Kei glared at him and he gave her his best shit-eating grin. She huffed. 'Don't push it, kiddo. I have three boys your age who try that, and it doesn't work.' She glanced at Selen. 'You were right, he called it.'

'You already _had _a plan?' He flushed when he saw his mother's fond smile. Oh… of course they had. 'Mom…'

'Who am I rounding up?' Kei asked him, all business. When he told her she looked bleak. 'Bastards,' she muttered. 'Are we sure there's nothing left of the originals?'

'Once you know what to look for, it's obvious,' Rei told her. She'd known all of these guys for the better part of twenty years. This had to hurt. 'The blue lightning avoids them… but it's not something you'd spot unless you knew what it meant. I'm sorry Kei - those men… they're not alive as we know it. Not anymore. Even my body's a living organism, just artificially grown. Their cells… they're dead.'

'I'm sorry Kei,' Selen told her. She laid a hand on the younger woman's shoulder. 'I'll take the boys with me,' she continued. 'There's a lot of work to do here. Mamoru and Rei here can work on the power supply, and I have to speak to Nero's people about their own defences. With a bit of luck I can get Rei here to check them out when we do it.'

'It won't be so easy outside,' Rei warned her as they walked away. 'On board the _Arcadia_ the background dark matter makes seeing the auras a lot easier.'

'I know, love,' she told him. 'But I have faith in you.'

He smiled at her and placed his arm around her waist to hug her as they walked. 'So… no pressure then?'

She laughed. 'You can take it, kiddo.' She ruffled his hair and smiled fondly as he ducked away with a mock growl.

* * *

Kei almost walked into Mamoru in the main spinal corridor. Lost in contemplation, she was neatly fielded by her son, who smiled down (very slightly) at her. 'Head up, mom. You want to be one of those morons who wanders around with their face buried in the latest lobotomising device of the day?'

'Cheek,' she huffed at him. 'Good grief, Harlock's right… you have grown!'

He grinned. 'Selen's cooking… sure as hell isn't yours!'

She thumped him lightly on the arm. 'You get that 'tude from your father…'

'I'm told by almost everyone that I come by this honestly from both sides of the family twig,' he assured her.

'That,' she replied darkly, 'is nothing to be proud of…' She frowned. 'Aren't you supposed to be with Rei and Selen?'

'On my way!' he started speaking cheerfully, but trailed off as he watched her expression. 'Mom… what gives? Rei's bombshell?'

She sighed. 'Working out how to tell your father… I'd almost prefer to just deal with this and have done, but this isn't something I can really leave him out of. And we have to ensure we don't start a backlash amongst the crew…'

'Want me to come along?' he asked in all seriousness; fifteen years old and already sometimes, she thought, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She gave him a quick hug, thankful at least that he hadn't reached the stage of pulling away from affection. 'Thanks, but I've got this. I'd rather you were somewhere else when this goes down.

'So,' he replied darkly, 'will those imposters, I suspect.' He raised his hand in a cheery salute. 'Catch you later?'

'Count on it,' she replied, a genuine smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She watched him break into a slow jog as he left, moving lightly and covering the ground with long strides. She tried hard not to have favorites - they both did. But where Wataru and Nami seemed hellbent on finding normal lives for themselves that probably wouldn't include piracy and excitement, Mamoru was probably the one most like his parents in temperament and outlook. Always looking to the next horizon, and Taro with him…

The thoughts at least took her mind off the main problem until she reached the door to the captain's quarters she shared with Harlock, and they opened before she could touch them.

Inside, lit as ever by a multitude of artificial candelabra which gave it the air of the interior of the ancient galleon this part of the ship resembled from the outside, her captain stood in front of the leaded windows, a glass in one hand, staring out at the brilliant blue sky outside. He must have just gotten out of the shower, since although he wore form-fitting white leather pants, his feet were still bare, and his dark sandy hair dripped slightly onto his bare shoulders, a thin trickle of water running down the line of his spine between lean muscle as she watched. He reached around with his free hand to brush the annoying droplets away before they vanished behind his waistband.

'Now _that _is my job,' she told him with a totally unstudied sultry tone as she walked towards him. She placed her tablet on the desk beside him and reached out to run her fingers down the same path the water had just taken, smiling against his skin as she laid her cheek against his left shoulderblade as he sucked in air. She lifted the goblet from his hands, and sniffed. 'Andromedan Red?'

'The occasion seemed to call for it,' he replied softly. He smiled faintly as she took a sip. 'And back at you…'

She placed the goblet down next to her tablet, careful to place it on a slate coaster. 'Rei thinks he identified…'

'I know,' he interjected. 'Tochiro told me…'

Kei ran her hand gently over his back, feeling the tension in his muscles as they twitched slightly under her wandering fingers. Catching sight of the personnel files on the desk she glanced at them.

Richard Lawrence.

Jiro Takematsu.

Valentine Marcos

He'd already marked them all as "deceased".

'Oh love…'

'They've been walking around for weeks, masquerading as friends we've known for years.' His voice was as tight as the muscles under her fingers.

'There's no mistake? Rei could be wrong…'

'I got Tochiro to do a full-spectrum scan. Once we knew what to look for. Wherever they go on the ship, there's a kind of darkness - an emptiness - in the part of the spectrum that dark matter inhabits. Nothingness in the nothingness, if you like. The rest of us light up the place like a street festival by comparison.'

_And you have no idea how hard it is to do a scan for a null entity_… Tochiro carped testily over the comms. _Basically I'm trying to search for the equivalent of negative space… as though the universe was only real _surrounding _them_. _It does my head in…_

'_Your_ head?' Harlock muttered. Kei ran her fingers along the line of one of the many lines of fern-like scars that marred his back in defiance of the healing powers of the dark matter they were surrounded by - and infused with. The legacy of a sadistic attack years ago, when their current problems barely registered on the horizon. He reached for the dark sweater thrown casually over the back of the ornate chair. 'Let's get this over wi…'

The _Arcadia's _internal siren went off, wailing in their ears.

* * *

Kei winced and reached for the kill switch. The siren faded only a fraction of a second ahead of our commlinks chiming in unison, Mine was still pinned to the collar of my jacket, resting in a heap on the chaise longue several feet away. Still trying to pull my sweater on over my head, I swore under my breath as I trotted over to grab it, and then reached for my boots.

Kei took the more expedient method of getting information. 'Tochiro?'

_Seems our foe read the play book… That's Yattaran calling in a raid on the armoury, Maji reporting that Jiro just tried to splatter his brains over a bulkhead in the coolant transfer room, and Mamoru just tried to tackle Rick on the flight deck._

'Where are the other two?' I straightened my sweater and pulled on the jacket, sealing the front fastening and grabbing my gun belts.

_Doscoi and Maji are trying to shut down Jiro - he's trying to blow the coolant system. Val's heading towards the bridge._

'Seal it off, Tochiro,' I ordered. 'All internal bulkheads. Give me a holo plan of the ship's interior.'

The holo appeared above the desk, projected from the hollowed out interior of the ancient oak surface. The gothic monstrosity was stuffed with high-end electronics.

'Comms,' Kei ordered.

I gave my orders even as I perused the ship's layout in 3-d as it hovered above the age-scarred surface. 'Attention all hands. We have intruders on board, to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Rick, Takematsu and Val are not who they appear to be. Do not engage. Interior bulkheads are being sealed to contain the threat. Shelter in place or return to quarters until further notice. I repeat - these are not our colleagues, but metanoid imposters.'

I placed my hand inside the image and traced a line from the armoury to the hangar deck. 'Seal the hangar off - that should contain Rick. Executive override on the hangar bay doors to be initiated. Open only on my orders or Kei's. Who's trapped in that section?'

'Cai and Mamoru,' Kei replied, as she checked the locator signals. 'Really? He was supposed to be on his way out of the ship via the pedestrian entrance…'

'Get him on the personal link,' I told her. 'See if he and Cài Qiān can get Rick off the ship safely. Tochiro - add Mamoru to the list with executive override. If they have to give him a space wolf, so be it. They can give chase. Where's that coolant room?'

Kei pointed it out. 'Starboard corridor. I'm getting Yattaran's report - they took several Cosmo guns from the armoury, and a lot of explosives.'

'Not keen on the suicide option then?' I added dryly. 'That's interesting… and good for us.'

_I can rig a dampening field around that area_, Tochiro added. _I'm already talking to Maji - the detonators won't work inside that - we specifically rigged them to be useless inside the ship unless both the override and the field are off. They might be able to hack the detonators, but they can't hack me…_

'Good,' I grunted. 'But we still need Jiro's doppelganger out of there safely….'

'I'll go,' Kei offered. She reached for her own sabre, in its stand next to the window. 'There's a chance we can contain the explosive potential of their helium 3 cells if we decapitate them…' she She shoved it home into a holster with decisive, grim finality. 'Have Yattaran meet me there with a portable force-shield,' she told Tochiro. I had barely enough time to nod an unspoken "take care" in her direction before she took off at a run.

'Which leaves Val…' I mused. My fingers traced the possible paths from the armoury, the hologramme twisting and turning under my manipulations. 'Three possible routes from there that aren't a major health hazard or the hangars… I'm guessing Rick's plan was to blow the space wolves - the damage would be catastrophic that close to the engines. Jiro was targeting the crew with the coolant leak we'd planned to fake to draw them out… so logically Val's target would be the bridge, and the dark matter engine, or the central computer room…'

_Can't let them get to the bridge_… Tochiro replied. _But there is a way to contain this if you draw them out towards the other target…_

'You? Tochiro…'

_Jammers, Harlock. The one thing we can't use on the bridge. Send him _my _way_.

'Where is he?'

_Stuck between two bulkheads_. The section in question glowed red on the map. The bulkheads between this area and the bridge glowed orange, those towards the central computer room green.

I sucked in a deep breath, and let it out again. 'Question is… will they take the bait?' I tapped my commlink. 'Secure channel. Ali? You still there?'

'Sitting on me thumbs,' Ali's voice called out over the link. 'What the fuck is going down out there, captain?'

'Didn't you get the memo? Listen, I need you to arm yourselves from the emergency locker. I'm opening up a route for one of our imposters. If they don't take the bait, it's up to you.'

'Captain…'

I cut him off, not wanting to risk saying more in case the comms were compromised. 'Counting on you, Ali.' I cut the link. 'Okay, my friend… open the bulkheads…'

On the hologramme, the bulkheads between the armoury and the bridge opened up one by one. The invitation was a risk - it might take the supposedly easier option and risk the trap. But I was betting everything on the hope that like most "lifeforms" that considered themselves so sneeringly superior to us mere mortals, that "Val" would disdain to pick the low hanging fruit, sensing a) the trap and b) that we had more worth protecting in the central computer room.

A small light on the side of the corridor blinked on the holo. A hatch had been opened.

'Conduit?' I asked.

_Conduit_, Tochiro replied with no little satisfaction. _Send someone in behind him please. I've got no sensors in those inter-panel spaces… we don't want any nasty surprises.._

'Gotcha…' I muttered nastily as I checked the charge on my weapons. 'My friend - give me a path to the central computer room. I'm on my way.'

_Will do_. Tochiro paused momentarily. _Erm… I do already have a guest… What do I do with her? She's kipping in the overhead cables again and no matter how often you tell her…_

'She won't carry on board…' I groaned inwardly. Mimay always waved off my concerns about her not being armed. 'Wake the sleepy nibelung up and tell her to get her arse out of there.' I picked up the pace, the bulkheads opening in front of me and closing behind with mathematical precision.


	16. Chapter 15

Mamoru picked up the pace as he ran, still hearing his father's voice ringing in his ears after the announcement. He hadn't been far from the hangar bay when the bulkheads started to seal shut, and he dived under the last one with the same move that had launched him over the tryline numerous times to the chagrin of the opposing team.

A gloved hand appeared under his nose from his right side, and fingers wriggled in front of his left.

'Shit!' Taken by surprise he rolled out of the way and onto his knees, clearing his pistol as part of the same move. 'Dammit, Cai!'

'Sorry, Mamoru. Forgot.' Cai offered his hand again and helped Mamoru to his feet. Standing side by side, Mamoru towered over the dapper little pilot. 'He's over by the fighter bay, I don't think he knows we're here,' he whispered. 'By the way - cutting you from the team looks more and more like a crap idea,' he added. 'You've got some pace…'

'Stuff 'em,' Mamoru grunted, sliding the safety off his pistol. 'Some wag suggested moving me from the wing to blindside flanker and I let him know what I thought of his little "joke"…' He jerked his head in the direction of the planes. 'I've got Tochiro twittering in my ear since these guys will be all over our usual frequencies. It's Rick, isn't it?'

Cai nodded. 'He's doing something to the engine on the Captain's plane. I was about to tackle him when you launched yourself under the door…'

'Good job you didn't. These guys can take us apart without breaking a sweat, and you don't want to kill one in here if we can avoid it. Shoot to cripple if he comes at us, but Tochiro says dad's advising to encourage him to take a plane and run for it. They want to sabotage us, but he thinks not at the expense of their own lives.'

'And if he runs?'

Mamoru ginned ferally. 'Then we give chase…' From their position behind a stack of supply pods he risked sticking his head around the side. "Rick" had his back to them, and was reaching up to open a small hatch in the side of the black and red space wolf that belonged to Harlock. Mamoru's movement caused the stack of crates to move slightly, making a small rubbing sound, and the imposter whipped round, staring at the area with a frown. Mamoru held his breath, and hoped the lighting - which left the area he crouched in shadow-wreathed and gloomy - was dim enough to protect him.

It must have been, because with an all too human shrug, the imposter turned back to his task.

Mamoru let out a sigh as quietly as he could, and tried to figure out what the imposter was attempting. 'That's the gravium intake…' he muttered softly. 'You could take out half the stern if you take off with the wrong mix…' He pulled his head back in and tapped Cai on the shoulder. 'Not a good idea to start shooting in here,' he whispered next to the other man's ear. 'Most of the systems and the planes do not react well to blasters. But we really need to make it not worth his while staying.'

'I'm open to suggestions,' Cai whispered back. 'Shit… Are we sure that's not Rick? The guy was my wingman for years… between him and Kei, taught me everything I know about flying. Hell… I've been sitting with him in the mess every day. We've always been friends - he lost Layla to the plague only a day after Matt... '

'Rei saw it. And my guess would be that they use your brain as a kind of hard drive - so they can access the stored data, but maybe using different software? That would explain how they know stuff, but can't really nail the personality.'

'He has been a little quiet lately,' Cai mused sotto voce. 'But it's the anniversary of the destruction of the Deathshadow Three in a few days. I just figured that like me, he kind of felt it a bit hard…'

Mamoru laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. There really wasn't much he could say. His and Wataru's birthday fell only a day after Yumi had died, which had left them both feeling more than a little shit about the whole thing every year.

Cai was still speaking, he realised. '... you'd better wait here. Be hell to pay if anything happens to you.'

'Bugger that.' Mamoru took a firm grip on his pistol. 'I can…'

Their hushed whispering hadn't caught the attention of the saboteur, but the soft clank of the butt of his cosmo pistol against the heavy plastic crate seemed to ring out in the hangar like a bell. Both men froze as footsteps headed in their direction, paused halfway, then started up again with purpose, metallic boots clicking on the grated flooring.

'Who are you talking to, Cai?' Rick called out as he walked towards them. 'Why are you hiding behind there? Don't tell me _you're _one of the imposters…'

Ignoring Mamou's attempts to hold him down by dint of tugging on his sweater, Cai stood up, with a silent admonition to stay put. 'Funny, Rick. It wasn't _my _name the captain called out over the tannoy…' He held his pistol easily in his left hand, and pointed it at the erstaz pilot. 'Rick was a friend for almost twenty years, you bastard. What did you do with him? And when?'

'You won't shoot,' the fake Rick said evenly. 'I know Harlock briefed you on the fact we explode rather violently when killed. A helium 3 explosion in here - so close to the gravium storage and the rear propulsion drive? Would do more damage than I was planning. Be reasonable, Cai. Who were you talking to? Will he come out if I threaten to splatter your brains all over the captain's shiny toy here?'

'No-one. I was on the comms.'

Mamoru flinched. Even he could make out the bravado in Cai's voice.

"Rick" laughed. 'Really? You know, we do make improvements to these bodies, and that includes the sensors. It sounded to me like the captain's purblind brat… What do you say, Little Harlock? Can you come out of hiding and face me? One of the least of your foes? I'm little more than a footsoldier for our great Metanoid race. Are you so afraid? Will you cower behind crates and your elders, while others fight and die for you, little boy?'

Mamoru growled low in his throat and tightened his grip on his cosmogun, even as he heard Cai tell him to stay put.

'You however are just annoying,' he heard the metanoid say to Cai. 'So lost in the pain of that long lost soul that you wish for death, but are afraid to embrace it - and rightly so, because you'll find us facing you on the other side of the veil…'

A shot rang out, and Mamoru risked popping his head up to see what was happening. Cai stood over Rick, pistol aimed at his head. Rick's gun lay on the ground several feet away, and his left hand had been shot away.

There was no blood. As Mamoru watched, the area around the jagged wound flickered oddly, then bulged and swelled, dividing into fingers and a new hand under his startled gaze.

'Nice try,' the metanoid told an equally startled Cai. Then his right arm shot out- Rick's _missing_ arm, lost to a firefight against the machinners eighteen years before - grabbed Cai by the neck, shook him once and threw him across the hangar. The small pilot slammed head first into the wall and slumped bonelessly to the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle even before he'd hit. The ten foot long arm casually reached down and picked up the discarded pistol as it returned to a more human size.

Taught by his father, his mother and more experienced freedom fighters than most people ever know in a lifetime, Mamoru fired twice, taking out the fake pilot's legs. Although his father's plane was closest, he avoided it, not knowing how much damage the creature had done to the fuel injection system before it had been disturbed. _Don't think of it as Rick…_ he told himself as he planted another shot mid torso to keep it occupied regenerating as he ran for his mother's red and black space wolf. _it's a monster wearing a friend's face…_

He slammed the cockpit canopy down with a sigh of relief as a fleshy tentacle tried to squirm after him, the cold fingers briefly brushing against his neck.

He thumbed the comms on as he frantically went through the start-up sequence. Cold starting the space wolf wasn't recommended, but since he didn't plan on heading above the stratosphere, he figured he could bypass the safety protocols. 'Mighty metanoid warriors seem to have difficulty taking on teenage boys,' he taunted it. 'Nice trick you can do with the tentacles, but makes me wonder - can you fly? Why don't we take this outside? Unless you're just a gutless protoplasmic sack of shit? Can't take out a smart-mouthed little human punk on his own turf?'

The creature (_notRicknotRick_…) laughed, and the sound - making no attempt now to sound even remotely human - chilled his blood.

'You want me out of this ship,' it told him. 'Why should I indulge you?'

Mamoru hit the remote access for the hangar bay doors and prepped the engines for takeoff. 'Oh… maybe because it might send a message to my father far more effectively if you kill his eldest son on our terms… to show what you can do with such inferior bodies and technology?' He paused. 'Unless of course you really are just a coward who can only win when you have the upper hand… I mean, any moron can win when he has a great advantage in superior physiology and technology…'

'I have the experience and reflexes of this body at my disposal,' the creature snarled at him. On the viewscreen it wasn't even trying to look like Rick anymore, he noticed. The body was more attenuated, rather like the nibelung, but with oddly shark-like eyes, a deep widow's peak, and a strangely bulbous facial structure, the nose flat almost to just being two nostrils and a slit of a mouth. He shivered. 'Multiplied by an exponential factor. I'll take your challenge, Little Harlock.'

It ran towards one of the planes - Rick's, as it happened - with a looping run that looked as though its knees were on back to front. He reached for the helmet stowed under the seat and shuddered as he clicked it into place - a little tight, but the neck fittings at least were standard. 'Little Harlock _me_ would you? Come and get me, asshole…' The space wolf slipped neatly into the magnetic railing and launched gracefully into the air, swooping upwards as Mamoru headed for the top deck as fast as he could, taking her into a vertical climb that would have been impossible without the cockpit's inertial dampers. His radar pinged to show the other plane on a similar vector, trying to get a lock. 'Nice try… now let's see if the guys can get a lock on _you _that won't take _me _out…'

* * *

On the bridge Ali swore when the proximity alert pinged on his console. 'I've got two fighters coming out of the hangar heading for the hard deck,' he called out. 'Martinez?'

'Getting Kei's call-sign, but she's slapping seven hells out of Takematsu with Yattaran. The other's Rick's…'

_It's Mamoru_… Tochiro replied over the sub-vocal comm channel he used for security. _I can see what he's planning. Ali - this'll need a steady pair of hands on the point defence guns_…

'No shit, lil guy,' Ali grunted. 'These things are calibrated for space combat, not aerial.' According to his read-out the planes were barely a couple of miles apart. 'Those two are practically humping each other, they're so close. Can't you tell the kid to get a bit of distance?'

'I do that,' Mamoru called out over the comms. 'And he'll smell a rat. He's a smug little shit - instead of keeping his distance and firing a long range missile, he's determined to do this old school. Thinks that if he sticks to my… whoa! Asshole! … you won't dare fire.'

'He's got a point.' Ali swore under his breath as on the viewscreen, Kei's space wolf slid and slithered out from under another volley of fire from the fighter chasing it. The space wolf had a weapons range measured in tens of miles, even in atmosphere. By comparison Rick was forcing Mamoru to stay low and pinning him almost to eyeball distance. 'Just stop playing with him and shake the bastard, Mamo - I can draw a bead on him but not when he's trying to crawl up your tailpipe!' His fingers danced over the console, trying to adjust the safety protocols to allow for both a short range firing solution, and to try and isolate Rick's fighter from the one Mamoru was flying. 'Shitshitshitshit… the computer's fighting me all the way on this. This system wasn't designed to be used at such short range…'

'You think I'm faking this?' Mamoru's voice went from his pleasant adult tenor into a boyish treble and back. 'Fucking nail him already, Ali! I'll worry about me!'

'What the fuck do you think I'm trying to do, kiddo? And the bastard's keeping you within the safety range deliberately. You gotta break out, Mamo, I don't care how you do it. Either get clear or get some distance!' He slammed a fist into the console. 'Fuck. Tochiro? Can't you disengage the safety margin?'

'Main computer's unresponsive!' Franz called down. 'Fuck knows what's going off down there - I've got basic systems only. The main system - Tochiro - seems to be fully occupied elsewhere. We're on our own!'

'What?!' Mamoru's voice almost reached a high C. 'Oh, fuck this. Ali - I'm gonna have to do this the hard way. I'm bringing this sucker in over the top deck. Suggest you close the blast shields…'

'Hard way? Wait… what? Kiddo - what the hell are you…' Ali stared at the screen in disbelief. 'You gotta be kidding me… is he doing what I think…'

'Fuck me…' Martinez breathed on the top gantry. 'Oh… I see his plan. It might work, if he can pull up before Rick does…'

'He's mental!' Ali screeched. But he held his hand over the blast shield control.

'He's right… the outer hull can take the impact,' Franz called down. 'And that's not an occupied area. If Rick takes the bait…'

Outside, the red fighter went into a steep dive, then levelled out skimming the ocean surface, the other plane close on its heels firing almost continuously. The red plane dodged and weaved with a frantic skill, and headed straight for the _Arcadia_.

Ali's fingers drummed on the edge of the console. 'C'mon… c'mon… you put so much as a scratch on that paintwork your mom'll ground you til you're thirty, kiddo.'

'I put a scratch on the _Arcadia's,_ dad'll ground me until I'm _Hannibal's _age,' Mamoru shot back. A blast caught the tip of his right wing and the plane shuddered in the air. On the bridge there was a collective intake of breath and a series of relieved sighs as Mamoru fought and brought the fighter back under control.

'Two miles!' Franz called out.

'Anything happens to him, Harlock'll stuff a pole up my ass and use me as a mop to clean out the coolant ducts,' Ali muttered.

The fighter screeched into view in real time, buzzing the conn tower and making a vertical climb so close to the bridge window Ali felt he could reach out and touch the under belly of the craft as it sped past, followed shortly by the sonic boom.

The blast window slammed into place.

'Suck on that, SDF…' Mamoru muttered over the comms. Franz smirked at Martinez. 'Told you he wasn't happy about them blowing him off...'

'Their loss. Whoa!'

The plane chasing it couldn't match the climb - but then, on later reflection, Ali did wonder if Mamoru's plan hadn't been to lure it into a turn it couldn't match, or to offer it a better target.

It slammed into the blast window, and Ali flinched as the shield buckled, bulging into the bridge. Shards from the viewscreen - a transparent version of the allow that made up the hull - scattered into the room as it shattered, only to bounce back from the internal force field that ran in sync with the physical barrier. Even knowing it was there, the crew facing it still ducked, expecting a shower of white hot metal shards.

The secondary explosion rocked the entire tower, knocking all of them off their feet.

'One of these days, he'll put his hand in his pocket and get seats installed,' Ali grumbled as Rackham helped him to his feet. 'I'm getting too old to bounce around the bridge… Thanks Jacky. Damage report?'

'Took out a section of the hull below the bridge tower - we're listing a bit, but self-repair's kicking in. Big hole in the top elevation. No way a space wolf caused that much damage… we take that in battle every day!' Martinez called down.

'Yeah… but not with helium 3 bombs on board,' Ali muttered. 'Damn… those things are walking talking suicide bombers… that ain't good.' Belatedly he clicked on the commlink. 'Mamoru? You there kiddo, or do I have to make a run for another galaxy?'

'I'm here,' came the faint response. Ali grinned. Despite his cockiness, the kid sounded shaken. And about time, he added mentally. Before he wrote a cheque his body couldn't cash… 'Bringing her back in.'

'Do I need to get her detailed before your mom sees it?' Ali asked cheekily.

'Would you?' Mamoru replied, some of his natural bravado creeping back into his voice. 'I'd be in your debt…' he finished wearily.

'Bring on her home, kiddo,' Ali told him, not totally able to keep the relief out of his voice. 'How the hell did you force him down?'

'Dad's and Mom's planes got the new EW upgrades just before I left for Niflheim, and with a bit of judicious tweaking, you can send an over-ride to the avionics on the older planes in the wing, in case of pilot incapacitation. It's a bitch to do on the fly and keep from getting tagged though, but basically I made his systems think he was several hundred feet higher than he was. If he'd really been Rick though, he'd never have fallen for it. Rick always taught us to use your eyes, not rely on your instruments. Hoisted by his own supercilious superiority complex…' But his voice tailed away with a note of sorrow. 'Damn it, Ali… he was a friend and I grew up with his kids. Guy and Clare are going to hate me for this.'

'You didn't kill his dad,' Ali assured him, somewhat grimly. 'Get your arse back down here and I'll send a couple of guys to fetch you. Don't fancy anyone wandering the ship alone until we've mopped up this infestation.'

'Guess Nero's panopticon policy makes sense now, huh?' Franz said as Ali clicked off the comms.

'Bloody living nightmare,' Ali grunted. 'Jacky - take Kane and fetch Mamoru back here.'

'Erm… no can do,' Martinez called down. 'The central computer's still ignoring us, remember? And the internal bulkheads are still down…'

Ali swore under his breath. 'It's just one of those days, innit. Any news from the captain or Kei?'

'Yattaran's called in. Maji's taken a hit to his noggin, but otherwise okay. They got the bastard hog-tied. Apparently Kei chucked her clipboard at him…'

Ali chuckled. 'Man… why do I always miss the good stuff? Always said she was dangerous with that thing… Let me guess? She's heading for the Central Computer Room?'

'Via the ducts,' Franz told him. 'Complaining all the way…'

'Should lose a bit of weight then,' Ali smirked. 'Said she was putting on a bit on those hips…'

Franz whistled through his teeth. 'You do like living on the edge, don't you?'

'Franz me old mate, around here, there's no other way.' Ali stomped over to the back wall of the bridge and stared at the grill inset at about waist height. 'That goes straight back to the Central Computer room, doesn't it?'

Jack Rackam - a tall red-haired man in his early thirties with an engaging grin - pulled up a schematic. 'If these are still current, about two hundred yards and you'll be past the bulkhead. But it gets a bit tight at the mid-point.'

'Well if I get stuck,' Ali said as he pulled the grill off the wall and stared into the black hole revealed, 'someone'll just have to cut me out, won't they?' He pulled a small but powerful torch off his belt from his utility pouch. 'Here's where I hope years of Anita's cooking hasn't gone to my hips,' he quipped as he placed the torch in his teeth and pulled himself up into the opening, wriggling until he'd gotten all the way inside. The crew listened in silence as his boots periodically clanged off the walls as he eased his way along.

'I thought the captain put him in charge here?' Martinez muttered to Franz. Who shrugged. 'Like he'd leave the captain in danger if he saw a way to get to him?' he asked.

'Fair point,' Martinez granted. He smirked. 'Bit optimistic though, isn't he?'

'Why? Getting through that pinch point with those hips?' Franz sniggered.

'Nah. That we'd rush to cut him out if he got stuck…'

Back through the ducting a voice floated back 'I can hear you bastards, you do know that, right?'


	17. Chapter 16

Sealing the bulkheads hadn't been the best choice I could have made in hindsight. Once Tochiro went offline to do whatever it was he needed to do, I was forced into the internal conduits. Thankfully I'm skinny enough to get through the crawlspace that links the captain's quarters to the corridor around the corner from the Central Computer room, although it's a tight squeeze in places, with a tight bend at one point I wasn't sure my predecessor would have gotten around with his greater height unless he hinged in two places… It was also vertical for the last fifty feet, but at least bracing myself climbing cracks for fun came in handy for that part - although I wasn't sure if I hated the slippery metal's back-breaking need to wedge myself against the sides and slide downwards with some attempt at control, or skin-tearing rockfaces more by the time I reached the ceiling grill at the bottom.

There was enough room for me to undo the hatch and let it hang down quietly from one side so that I could jump down to the deck. I ruined my attempt at stealth as my boots clanged on the floor, ringing out like a bell with a spectacularly flat tone. Honestly, I might as well have just let the damn grill fall anyway, I mused as I picked myself up from the twenty foot drop and rubbed my right ankle. _Always that damned right leg_… I plastered myself against the nearest wall and waited, sabre drawn (and hadn't _that _been a mistake in cramped quarters? Maybe I could get Maji to copy the expanding gizmo Selen used…) trying not to hold my breath as I waited to see if "Val" had heard me. Or cared enough to come and look.

Probably the latter, if he - it - had made it this far and was in the data servers. What better place to ambush someone? There was plenty of cover there after all, with a clear line of sight down the only access corridor. Walking down that, I'd be a sitting duck. Unless I'd beaten him to it.

'Tochiro?' I called out quietly over the comms.

No answer. Hopefully that just meant the little guy was busy. The alternative didn't bear thinking about. I listened carefully - moving around stealthily on a spaceship isn't as easy as you'd think - metal soled boots on metal decks (a hedge against sudden, unexpected catastrophic artificial gravity failure) - mean that you tend to clank around like an old-time knight in armour.

Unless you do what I did, and take your boots off. I'd take cold feet and the remote chance of the gravity going ape over getting shot in the head. I left them underneath the main light switch, then reached up and killed the lights in the corridor leading down towards the Central computer room.

I take a lot of flak for our internal lighting… "gloomy" is the usual complaint, which is a little unfair - we just don't operate on the maximum daylight analogue a lot of Alliance ships think is necessary. Partly because it helps with the dark matter absorption on the inner hull, and partly as a courtesy to our resident nibelung, since they like it a bit dimmer than we do.

This plunged that section into a stygian darkness that most people would have hesitated to enter, but I did have a few useful gifts from half a lifetime give or take a couple of years of exposure to dark matter - the wispy blue lightning that permeates the ship is visible even to my remaining eye, and that was more than enough to allow me to navigate my way towards the main server room, especially since the room itself was still lit from the whirling red lights of the main computer's central column.

What I'd forgotten, because it rarely ever came up, was that I also glow in the bloody dark with those same wispy blue flames...

The blaster bolt sizzled over my head and slammed into the wall behind me. A flicker slower dropping after I'd registered the incoming bolt and I'd have been short an ear as well as an eye.

That roll left me exposed, lying on the cold floor, and I rolled out of the way of a second blast, before letting rip with my own. The blast from the sabre rifle took a chunk out of the doorway next to the metanoid's head, and forced it to duck back out of sight. Since I had no cover, the only option was to get to my feet and run like hell for the servers, keeping up a stream of suppressing fire as I headed for the closest back. Breathing hard, I slammed into the monolithic electronic dolmen to brake, and tried to get a sense of where my opponent was.

_And where, in all of this, was Mimay_…?

A tiny green firefly landed on the tip of my nose and vanished with a silent pop. I risked a quick check into the rafters. Mimay had a habit of lounging on the overhead cabling like a kitten up a tree, but she tended to stay at head height. This time however I had to crane my neck to find her - over fifty feet up on one of the nests of cables that connected the central core to the bridge. Hopefully our third infiltrator hadn't spotted her. Reassured for now at least, I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. Since no more shots were heading in my direction, "Val" either thought he'd taken me out, or figured I'd be keeping my head down. I peeked around the side of the server I sheltered behind, and finally saw someone moving behind the far side of the massive tree-like structure that we laughingly refer to as merely the central computer.

The _Thunderbolt's_ central core was superficially similar to ours - a circle of large data servers surrounding the central core which rises from the centre of the room over a hundred and fifty feet into a dome behind the bridge. But where the _Thunderbolt's_ core was a monument to electronic minimalism - lattices of crystal and quantum superconductors wrapped in a tectite shell - the _Arcadia's_ central computer resembled something out of ancient myths - a gigantic tree rising out of a circle of futuristic standing stones, massive cabling arrays trailing away from it like the roots of the ancient tree it resembled as though it had been grown, not built.

Some of those roots were tall enough to hide a man if he crouched down behind them, and sure enough, near the base of that great trunk, I could see blond hair bobbing in and out of view as Val's copy worked on something out of sight.

Very quietly and slowly I raised the sabre rifle to take aim, not unaware of the irony… Years ago I'd been in a similar position, my hand hovering over the butt of a pistol as I'd watched a man sitting with his back to me apparently oblivious to my approach, with a nibelung on overwatch in the overhead branches. Then, I'd been the monkey in the wrench.

I might have gotten the shot off this time, if the entire structure of the ship hadn't suddenly shuddered violently as something smashed into the hull. I slammed into the monolith next to me and lost my grip on the sabre, which skittered off into the darkness under one of the trailing cable bunches.

The secondary explosion knocked me off my feet and I slammed into the floor, knocking the breath out of my lungs and catching my head on the side of one of those conduits. The sting of the cut I got on my temple was secondary to the blinding pain that hammered into my skull somewhere behind my blind right eye, but even dazed and battered, I heard the piercing scream from above as the aftershock dislodged Mimay from her perch, sending her plummeting over fifty feet to what would be a messy end, unless her connection to the ship had made her splatterproof. Not wanting to risk it, I desperately tried to reach her as she tumbled, thankfully (or not, depending on how many bruises she'd be sporting) she bounced off at least two of the lower tiers of wiring on her way down, which slowed her fall enough so that by the time I took a second tumble to the floor, this time underneath a pile of slender alien fairy and diaphanous veils and silky hair, I cushioned her fall somewhat.

Me, I wasn't so lucky. My right wrist snapped like a twig. Slender and delicate she might be. Dainty she isn't. I extracted the damaged limb from under a pert green ass and hissed through my teeth as the pain shot straight back up the arm and slammed into my already aching head. 'Son of a bitch…' I forced out quietly through tight lips. 'Mimay?'

She was very quiet and outwardly still, but her eyes - wide and round at the best of times - seemed even wider, and her third eyelids were flickering wildly, almost in time with her beating heart, which I could feel fluttering against my chest.

'Disarmed and damaged… who knew you'd come practically gift-wrapped?'

I looked up into the face of the metanoid. Val was one of the younger crew, and had been with us for about ten years. A good all-rounder, he'd been an Alliance officer until the fleet had agreed to join forces with the Machinners and pushed anyone looking for advancement towards mechanisation - not always making it a choice. After that he'd bummed around the outskirts for a few years, before Selen's people had found him, and determined his slightly antagonistic-to-authority tendencies might be a better fit for the Arcadia.

They'd been right - but it had, to my amusement, cost them a useful undercover operative. Val's annoyingly pretty-boy looks, long dark curls, blue eyes and charming smile could get him into almost anywhere. He often hung out with Ben, when the Gamilas Emperor's wayward offspring graced us with his presence, and the two of them were guaranteed on a night out to paint the town in rainbow colours and leave a trail of shattered hearts in their wake.

Now a monster looked out of that familiar face, and those blue eyes were a dull grey - like the one I'd seen on the beach, almost shark-like, they appeared so dead and flat. Maybe that was suggestion and the low lighting making his pupils look larger, but even so, the overall effect was shockingly inhuman. Val's warm, almost self-mocking smile was replaced by a predatory thin line.

'You should have just shot me before I saw you,' I replied quietly. Without taking my eye off him I rolled away from Mimay, making sure to try and keep myself between the monster and her. 'Don't they have a villains' handbook in the darker dimensions?'

'Why shoot you?' the voice was Val's. The intonation was not, being flat and devoid of emotion. 'By the time we've finished with this ship, you'll see this vessel under our control - stripped of the infestation that contaminates it, including the peculiar little rat that scuttles around the circuits of this control mechanism.'

'Fond of the sound of his own voice,' I told Mimay flippantly in a stage whisper, deliberately ignoring the fake Val. 'Always a mistake with rookies. Talk, talk talk…' Actually, I prefer the chatty ones. Whilst they're busy trying to impress or intimidate, they're not paying attention to what you're doing. This one was a gloater, and whilst turning my back on an enemy is something that should only be tried by an experienced professional, it usually has two benefits: it winds that type up faster than any sarcastic repartee, and allows me to get my hands on a hold-out.

I turned around slowly, a short straight blade palmed neatly up my left sleeve, and my best annoying smirk plastered over my face.

Gratifyingly, even body-snatching zombie hell-spawn can develop a nervous tic at the corner of the eye… It's all in the presentation. I usually pretend I'm staring at a certain Count Lazarus. Works every time.

'You can't kill me,' it said eventually. 'Not in here. Even if you could get to the detonator in time…' it raised its other hand to reveal a small device, a green light blinking steadily, 'My cells would explode.'

'Go ahead,' I said calmly. 'Push it.' I folded my arms, wondered if I could cross my fingers, and hoped like hell Tochiro knew what he was doing… Behind the copy's head, the circles on the front of the central core whirled silently, red to green to red.

_Click._

_Clickclick._

_Clickityclickclickclick._

'Did you check the batteries?' I asked helpfully. It snarled and threw the detonator at me, following it up by raising the other hand, which was empty…

...and writhed and twisted into something resembling a dragon's snout, which spat some strange blackish-green stream of fire at us. I pushed Mimay down and only just missed getting hit by it. Part of my jacket was gone when I rolled to my feet, blackened at the edges, although there'd been no heat. I threw the knife as I moved, hitting exactly where I'd aimed, taking out its left eye.

It screeched - more in anger I suspect than pain. It pulled the knife free and howled. The injury flickered in the strange way I'd seen on the beach earlier - as though the image I saw was an overlay on reality, and for a moment something decidedly unhuman stood in front of me - more mist and tentacles than anything else - I couldn't seem to see it clearly, as though my brain refused to process what it saw.

I'd expected to only get a moment's grace before it healed itself - I'd hoped that would be enough to allow me to dive for my sabre rifle, where it had lodged under a tangle of cabling. But even at maximum stretch, the hilt was just a tantalising, useless inch away when a heavy boot came down on my back. As my fingers scrabbled for the rifle, the weight increased, slowly but surely crushing my ribcage. The trip-trapping click of Mimay's boots on the floor was met with a heavy thud and a breathless little cry as it knocked her flying, followed by the soft slow slide of her slumping to the floor.

My saviour came from a different quarter. A rush of large wings and a loud, indignant cawing announced the arrival of Tori-san, diving at the creature's face, I hoped. The weight on my chest was lifted to the tune of assorted curses and a lot of squawking. A heavy thump and a piteous cry were my only warning as the poor thing crashlanded next to me with a heavy thump, but it wasted no time: that long neck and beak snaked out and grabbed the sabre's skull-fronted hilt and tugged it into reach of my fingers. I barely had time to grab it, roll, and try and shield my brave bird as that thing once again spat the strange flame from its mutated hand. 'What kept you?' I asked it. I got a faint caw in reply. One wing was stuck out at an unnatural angle, but I had no time for subtlety. I shoved him ungently under the conduit. 'Stay put, pal. You've done your bit.' I rolled away and to my feet in a move that was nowhere near as graceful as it sounds, holding the weapon trained on the metanoid.

Except it no longer looked even remotely human. What stood in front of me now, between me and the central core, was a dark, bulging mass of muscle that resembled no beast I'd ever seen - and I'd been around a bit. It looked as though it was made of parts of creatures - clawed hooves, backward at the knee, with a reptilian skin and a fanged mouth with a gape worthy of a crocodile. Only the eyes were still human, and that just made the whole thing even creepier. Although it stood on four thick, oddly jointed legs it had two snake like arms, each now sporting one of those dragon heads, both of which were facing me, and ignoring Mimay who crouched off to one side, her face bearing an uncharacteristic snarl.

I fired, and the wound flickered, bulged and sealed shut without a trace.

Fuck.

Except… it moved slightly, and that revealed an injury to a foreleg that didn't seem to be healing. Blue fire flickered along the edges of a gash over six inches long. Mimay must have hurt it, but with what? She didn't go armed…

'Mimay?'

'Harlock.' She sounded tired, and when she did move it was slowly and without her usual grace.

'Fireflies might help,' I said cryptically, hoping she'd understand. I slid the sabre across the floor to her and leapt for the monster, in a sliding tackle that allowed me to scoop up my knife along the way. I slid underneath the damn thing and rammed the blade into the armpit under that massive chest. Mimay fired, and then the thing let out a scream that cut right through my already aching head, pulling away from me and toppling over onto its side where it kicked and screamed some more, with both front legs and those deadly hands severed. Pale blue wisps from the field surrounding the gravity sabre - its "edge" were intermingled with thousands of tiny green sparks for a brief instant before they vanished like mist.

Neither wound bled, but neither did they regenerate. 'Cable!' I shouted over the din. 'Grab something to tie it up with!'

She didn't answer, but I heard the rifle clatter to the floor. I jumped on the creature's neck and snarled 'stay down' at it when it thrashed and squealed underneath me. 'Dammit…'

'Need a hand, captain?' Ali jumped on the thing beside me and passed me some heavy duty wiring.

'Oh… _now _you show up for the fight, once I've done all the hard work?'

He grinned at me, his face covered in substances that were usually kept well out of sight in the ship's multitude of pipework. 'Hey - you want to hogtie this critter all by yerself…'

'Just make sure your knots are good and tight this time,' I told him. Together we subdued the thing, and watched as it heaved increasingly feebly against its bonds, the remains of its arms tied to its rear legs and a noose around its neck tied to that rope to keep it compliant. Thankfully it seemed too shocked to realise it could just change shape - or just go nuclear. 'You do realise we've got to get this out of here, down half a kilometre of corridor and out of the ship, right? Before it gets its wits back?'

'Well if the little guy can get back online and open up the bulkheads, we'll get some muscle down here to help,' he replied breezily. He looked me up and down. 'Man… rookie, you look like shit.' Then he looked past me and his chirpy teasing vanished. 'Mimay!' He left my side and scooted over to where she lay in a heap, unconscious. He gathered her up gently. 'Captain…'

'Take her to Luna,' I told him. 'I can manage.' On cue, the telltale sounds of the bulkheads opening echoed through the cavernous chamber, and the lights came back on. 'Tochiro?'

_Never went away._ His voice was quieter than usual. _But it took a lot to keep those jammers going. I'd appreciate it if the clean up crew could get those things out of here when they collect that beastie…_

I looked over to the pile of explosives still lurking against the trunk of the central core. As Ali dashed away with Mimay in his arms, I wearily made my way over and dismantled them. One handed this wasn't easy, but I managed. The broken wrist still hurt like hell, but it was mending, slowly.

A pained caw reminded me I wasn't the only combatant in the room. I made my way back to where the bird lay, and rather more gently than I'd stuffed him under the cabling, pulled him free. 'Bravely done, again, little friend.' It rested its head on my shoulder and replied with a wobbly _cark_.

I was still cradling it in my lap, sitting in front of the whirling lights of the central computer, when the rest of the crew arrived.


	18. Chapter 17

_Thunderbolt_

The ship exited IN-SKIP in a cloud of darkness which trailed over the outer hull, pooling briefly around the conning tower in a vortex that dissipated before it reached the engines. Thin, misty wisps wandered randomly over the sleek surface as the ship drifted to a gentle cruising speed. The red lines on her hull were the only light in this black abyss between the galaxies, a tiny speck in an infinite universe.

Nero leaned back in the captain's chair, chin resting on his hand, and stared at the false-colour image on the main screen. Yanez, at the helm, toyed idly with the ship's wheel, occasionally tapping his fingers on the worn wood. 'Anything?' he asked. Yanez' shoulders lifted up and down in a minimal gesture.

'Nothing yet on long or short range scanners, even using those signature trackers Freya here gave us to upgrade the time radar. You know - there's an awful lot of empty space out here. How do we know they'll be here?'

'They will,' Freya said confidently. The tiny nibelung girl stepped over to the captain's chair and leaned against it, folding her arms against the padded back and resting her chin on them. 'The Miranda's tracking system had them on this course, and if I'd had time to reconfigure it, I could have used the same program to augment _Thunderbolt's_. They tear their way through subspace - you can't see where they are easily, but you can tell where they've been…' She tilted her head on one side. 'Of course, there is a way to make sure _they _find _us_…'

'That'd be the old "send up a flare" routine?' Yanez asked. He shook his finger at Nero before his captain could speak. 'No. Just no, my brother. I know that look. We wait for Harlock.'

'Just how bad can these ships be?' Nero muttered. 'I'm not doubting the boy's integrity, but he's not a fleet commander, now is he? Could be he just got out of his depth the last time - it was by his own admission not long after he took command of the _Arcadia_…'

Yanez leaned more heavily on the wheel. 'My brother, that "boy" is almost my age, and from what your old friend Hannibal tells me, he's a natural. He also doesn't strike me as someone given to hyperbole, so I'm inclined to follow his advice.' He gave Freya a sly sideways glance. 'Not jumping in there, lovely to defend your adopted father?'

'Harlock doesn't need me to defend him,' she replied. 'I've never personally encountered these ships, but I had access to a lot of ancient records that spoke of them, and my people created a version of them for their own use - Harlock came up against one of those copies, not the original, and they struggled to counter it. These are the real thing, and they're far more deadly, from what I remember.'

'On which note, how are my upgrades coming along?' Nero leaned across to smile at her. 'Harlock mentioned they were working on some tweaks to the shields and weapons systems to try and counter the regenerative abilities of those ships.'

'I've been setting your people to work as the data comes in from the _Arcadia_. You have some talented people on board.'

'I know. A couple of them worked with Tochiro back in the day.'

'I thought the captains were the only survivors?'

His answering smile was grimmer. 'The _Arcadia's_ crew was decimated by the attacks on her by Three and Two, and then the last handful died in the boarding action - Kodai's XO was on the bridge just after a shot took it out, and said they'd only found Harlock and Mimay. I can't speak for what happened to the crews of those ships afterwards, and I didn't ask Mamoru what happened to his people, but although we were caught up in the chain reaction, I still had forty-one crew - counting Yngwie - when we went down. Several settled elsewhere over the years, and we lost a few in battles, but there are still sixteen of us still standing, and that, thankfully, includes my engineering crew.

'But not you?' Freya smiled at Yanez.

'Hell no. I came aboard about thirty years ago. Nero here pulled me out of a hole on Serumatake whilst he was breaking some of his men out of the same gaol. After two weeks of breathing in rotting fungal spores in a damp cell…'

'...and you really don't want to know where that stuff grows,' Nero added, prompting a ripple of laughter from the crew. He winked at Yanez. 'The crazy bastard took a hit for me on the way out, and once we'd patched him up I offered him a ship.'

'There was rather more to it than that,' Yanez added. 'When you're older, I might even sit down and tell you some of it, lovely.'

'I'm over two hundred years old,' Freya pointed out. Both men spluttered.

'Well hell… keep forgetting your people are so long lived,' Yanez said. He beamed a wicked little smile her way. 'Sooner rather than later then?' She nodded. 'Now brief us, lovely, if you can explain it to us less technical types. What exactly has Harlock cooked up for us?'

'We need to find a way to stop their auto-repair from working. Mimay found some old weapons and an ancient record of weapons the Nibelung used when they last encountered them. We don't know if they'll work but we can try. Doscoi and Yattaran have also suggested using the photon cannon - modulating the frequency, and Harlock's suggestion - which we might not have time to try - involves something they cooked up for fighting the Mazone, involving the torpedoes and monofilament wire… which if we had time to run the wire through a dark matter generator, looks promising, but by the time we've used the onboard printers to create enough filament, we'd be up to our gunwales in metanoids…'

Yanez flashed Nero a toothy grin. 'Put like that, it does sound as though we need a cream for that, yes?'

'Is there nothing in nibelung records about the tactics for fighting these ships?' Nero asked.

Freya shook her head. 'Not that I'm aware of, but we did put in a call to Professor Oedo on Niflheim. He and his team have been working there with some mazone scientists, looking into preserving what's left of the cities. They have your frequency so he knows to contact you, but given the time-frame…'

Nero patted her hand. 'Sadly there hasn't been an enemy engagement yet where you could put your hand up and ask for a time-out.'

'Makes you wonder if it's worth a try?' Yanez laughed out loud at Nero's withering look. 'Left your sense of humour behind in the rush?'

'It's trembling and hiding under this chair at the thought of what awaits us,' Nero drawled. 'I've seen dark mattered powered ships in battle, my friend. You haven't. It took two ships to even come close to crippling the _Arcadia_ a hundred and twenty years ago. And if they hadn't gotten in a lucky hit on the weapons and taken out most of the gun crew in the first salvo, I'm not so sure Kodai and Komarova could have taken Harlock. Might explain what I've heard about his running with such small crews and relying on the automation - an invincible ship is worthless without a crew.' He frowned. 'Something Zone Industries were always keen on trying to replace, but never seemed to understand why AI wasn't a realistic substitute.'

'Why wasn't it?' Freya asked.

'Because this was Zone we're talking about, and he believed in cold hard algorithms… And an equation doesn't think, or feel. His ships were programmed by people who cared more for the bottom line than for anything more lofty - like - oh - human life.' He patted the control panel on the arm of his chair. 'Oyama's AIs were a different breed, based on the personality patterns of several gifted commanders. The old man wanted ships systems that could protect their crews, not just win battles.'

'So the _Thunderbolt's _is still active?' Freya tilted her head on one side and smiled. 'Who was it based on?'

'The Deathshadows shared a template, but as I recall Harlock, Mamoru, Okita's mother - who was an admiral herself, Admiral Sanada and Admiral Toda were all part of the project.' He smiled grimly. 'In a way the system was primed to accept something as strange as Tochiro's mind merging with it…' His smile grew a little sadder. 'And the _Deathshadow Zero_ was even more experimental - the databanks had an experimental overlay that Mamoru's wife volunteered for. He renamed the ship _Miranda _for a good reason - it's her voice and her personality profile on file.' His grin became a little more wolfish. 'And if I recall correctly there was a choice - he could have had Harlock as an option, because we all took turns being recorded…'

Freya laughed. 'Oh… I rather think _that_ would have been deleted a long time ago. I wonder if he realised that's based on the same technology that was used by Loki's rebels to download their consciousness into others?'

Yanez choked slightly. 'That sounds as though the copying process might be a little more detailed than you were led to believe,' he said to Nero. 'That Tochiro sounds like a bit of an overachiever…'

Nero laughed. 'Oh my friend… you have no idea what that little guy was capable of. If he'd cared much about their fathers' company beyond using it to facilitate Phantom's numerous follies over the years, and using it as their personal toybox, he'd have been a bigger danger than Hechi and Doppler if he'd been so inclined… thankfully neither he nor Phantom gave a damn about galactic domination.'

'He still doesn't,' Freya told them, smiling at their joint confusion.

'I thought he was dead?' Nero's frown normally made grown men blanch, but Freya weathered it with her cheeky grin and sparkling round eyes.

'It's... complicated… he seems to be entangled with the ship's dark matter on a quantum level. Tends to make an appearance every Earth year on the anniversary of the date he vanished. We're still trying to work out whether it's possible to get him back.'

'My brother… Do you remember a certain mousy-haired whippersnapper complaining about us dribbling out information on a need-to-know basis?' Yanez asked sarcastically.

'In fairness,' Freya replied, 'it's not exactly going to help us - that's at least five months away.'

'Would remorse be high on his intangible to-do list?' Yanez drawled.

Freya snorted delicately. 'Don't be silly. I've met him four times so far and whilst he's probably the most beautiful human male I've ever seen, he's as inflexible and convinced of his own infallibility as any of my own people.'

Nero shrugged. 'Sounds about right. If there's one thing about the commodore everyone agreed on, it's that that angelic body and face occasionally didn't make up for being something of a dick…'

'Commodore?' Freya asked. 'I thought he was just a captain?'

'Of the _Yukikaze _and the _Deathshadow Four_, yes. But they had to make him a commodore to command the Deathshadow fleet. And that, my dear, caused gnashing teeth in Admiralty HQ you could have heard clear to Andromeda.' Nero laughed. 'Komarova wasn't too happy either, since she outranked him and wanted that spot for herself. But the nibelung wanted Harlock, so…' he shrugged lightly. 'In hindsight, you have to wonder if things would have gone down a little differently.'

'I doubt it,' Freya replied, dimpling prettily at him. 'From what I've heard and seen, he'd have probably done the same thing - his actions weren't dependent on his command of the fleet, were they? I mean, being in command didn't stop them firing on him.'

Nero nodded his agreement. 'Fair point, little fae. Following orders had never been a strong point.' He grinned as though at a memory. 'But by god, we had some fun back in the day…'

The sensor tech looked up from his station and cleared his throat. 'Captain? That fun might be heading our way sooner than expected. I've got a trace on the long-range sensors, right at the limit of the time-radar.'

'Dark matter?' Freya asked, before either Yanez or Nero could speak,. She pulled a face. 'Sorry. Force of habit…'

'It's the signature you had us scan for, miss. Two of them.'

'Two?' Yanez shot Nero a worried look. 'Where's the third?'

Nero leaned back in his chair and called up his heads-up display. 'Someone else's problem, my brother. Get a lock on those traces and keep pace with them. Open a secure commlink to the _Arcadia _and tell them to get their arses in gear. Then warn Ventimiglia. Freya…'

'On it!' the little nibelung was already skipping back to her post at the dark matter controller.

Yanez turned away and took a firm hold of the helm, staring ahead at the main viewing window. 'You're enjoying this far too much, little brother,' he accused in a stage whisper. A ripple of laughter ran around the bridge.

'How long has it been since we put our lives on the line with such high stakes?' Nero asked him.

'Not nearly long enough,' Yanez replied with feeling.

'You've gotten soft,' Nero told him, laughter in his voice.

'I've gotten _old_,' Yanez replied drily. 'I'd _like _to get older…' He turned his head to catch the eye of the woman at the XO's station. 'Yara - talk to engineering - I want those upgrades online, and that shield modification in place asap. Freya - what can you do with the dark matter to make us a little less visible, lovely?'

'You're not as messy as _Arcadia_,' she called out. 'I've already started smoothing out your profile to try and make you stand out a little less from the background levels. If we slip in and out of IN-SKIP gently, there's a chance they'll just think we're a local anomaly. I doubt they're looking for you actively, unless they know you're coming.'

Yanez leaned on the wheel and let out a mock sigh. 'Oh. Well, there's no chance of _that _then, is there?'

'So cynical?' Nero twitted him.

'So much _experience_,' Yanez replied, his eyes fixed on the dark, sickly green trails on the screen, a frown on his weathered face.

* * *

_Miranda_

Hannibal tapped idly on the face of his tablet as the captains filed out of his war room, Farah trailing in their wake as though making sure they left the ship without taking the silver. He was tempted to call him back to let him know he'd missed one, since Morgan was hovering near the door, looking awkward instead of heading over to the _Lightning _on his shuttle.

'I thought we'd covered everything we needed to before we shipped,' Hannibal advised him smoothly.

'You did - quite frighteningly so,' Morgan replied. Circumscribed by his neat goatee, his mouth twitched in a slightly self-mocking smile. 'The Captain said you were scarily efficient… I'm starting to see what he meant. You have a way of stripping everything down into manageable chunks that makes an indigestible problem absurdly simple.'

'Hopefully it survives contact with our enemy,' Hannibal replied drily. 'No amount of preparation can make up for encountering an opponent who hasn't read the script.' Morgan let out a barking laugh, and Hannibal smiled at him. 'My brother used that as an excuse to simply face everything flying by the seat of his pants. Me - I prefer to plan for what I can, and hold improvisation in reserve.'

'Is that how you manage to stay so calm in the face of what would send most people into a spiral?'

'Like finding myself face to face with the living image of Miranda?' When the younger man hovered nervously, Hannibal decided to simply cut to the chase. 'If you keep gnawing at what life throws at you, lad, it won't heal. Doppler's actions have picked open a wound I'd thought long healed, I won't deny it, but I've lived long enough to know that sometimes you can only work with what the universe throws at you.' He glanced at the clock on the wall. 'Let me walk you to your shuttle. We're on a schedule.'

Wordlessly, Morgan fell into step beside him as he led the way through the ship. 'You seem like a nice young man, Morgan,' he continued. 'A rarity in a family plagued by its share of assholes - we tend to be great in battle but often make poor husbands and fathers.'

'You were an admiral,' Morgan pointed out. 'But everyone I've spoken to who knows you has nothing but good things to say…'

'A man can still fight to defend what he loves,' Hannibal replied gently. 'But those who love adventure and a battle for its own sake…' he trailed off. 'Let's just say there's a tendency to be a little single-minded and emotionally distant. After his wife died, my father preferred to lose himself in the skies of Earth rather than raise his legitimate son. Harlock's father and brother were both career military and between them made his teenage years a living hell…'

'And Ichimonji Dantetsu?' Morgan asked sharply. 'Strangely, apart from "great pilot", no-one will tell me anything. Harlock clams up looking as though he just bit into something sour. Selen just looks sad and changes the subject and Kei seems to be biting her tongue… Am I really such a "nice" man at heart? How would I know? I hear the man might have opened fire on his own command HQ...'

'I'm not convinced that was of his - or Douglas' own volition, so table that last. For the rest… Harlock regarded Dan as a friend, in some areas, but they clashed rather violently over Dan's treatment of his son,' Hannibal said softly. 'He lost his wife and eldest son to the Deathshadow plague. Afterwards… he went a little overboard trying to "toughen up" his youngest.'

'He was abusive?' Morgan looked a little frazzled at the thought. Hannibal winced inwardly. It wasn't the sort of thing a prospective father really needed to hear. He tried to reassure the younger man.

'Not out of malice. More a desire to make sure nothing could touch the boy. Plus Takuma's a sweet kid, but shy and artistic, not like his older brother, who was much more adventurous - I think also Dantetsu wanted to make him more like Susumu... I get him wanting to share his love of his own pursuits with his son, but the boy was only six…' he shook his head. 'He was pushing the boy far too hard, and Takuma… having lost everyone but his father, was desperate to please him.' He stopped, turned and clapped Morgan on the shoulder. 'Stop trying to second guess our reactions - and your own. You aren't Dantetsu, Morgan. There's a gentleness in you I never saw in Dan.' He continued walking, waiting for the younger man to keep in step. 'It does no-one any good to keep looking at you and the others looking for traces of the people you were cloned from. Have you ever heard of the legend of Orpheus?'

Morgan shook his head, his long curly hair - now stripped of the dark dye and back to its natural reddish-brown - falling over one eye, which he brushed away with a gesture Hannibal had seen repeated by so many of his family over the years. _Never occurs to any of us to get a haircut_… he thought, pushing his own silvery hair back out of his left eye.

'Bear with me. The story dates back well over three thousand years, but in essence, Orpheus loved a beautiful woman called Eurydice, and married her, only for her to die shortly afterwards - the details vary, but in his grief, he went into the underworld to beg its lord to allow her to return to the world of the living. Orpheus being a persuasive fellow, the lord of death agreed, on the understanding that he could not look back until they both reached the world of the living, and stood in the light of day.

'Orpheus began his long walk back from the underworld, at first sure in the knowledge his beloved followed behind. But after a while, he began to doubt. He heard no footsteps - was she really there? He'd been told she would be a shadow until they returned to the world above, but even so, he began to wonder if he'd been tricked. And as they came closer to the light, he started to fear that worse than a trick had been played on him. What if death had changed her - would she still be the woman he loved? Worse - what if this was not his wife, but a monster in her shape that he was bringing back to the world? If once he stepped into the light it would attack him, escaping into the living world to wreak harm on the living?

'His fear grew too strong, and on the threshold of the two worlds, he turned, to see the shade of the woman he loved hauled back into the underworld, never to return.'

On the threshold of the shuttle hangar, Morgan stopped and turned to stare into his eyes, a gaze Hannibal met calmly. 'I'm not _quite _sure what the point is?'

'Originally, I think it had more to do with accepting death and not trying to play the gods at their own game. But cloning… Creating _new _individuals is one thing - but we cannot claim those we've lost back from the land of death, Morgan. To do so is to invite the same fears into our hearts that poisoned Orpheus'. To be forever searching for the flaws, the differences, questioning whether or not what we see is really who we once loved and lost. I meant every word I said when I told you all I would not look for Miranda in Ianthe. I know that trap: every attempt ever made to reproduce an existing person faithfully has failed. I saw it on Lar Metal and saw the damage it did there.'

Morgan nodded slowly. 'And maybe to love only what we see isn't love at all?'

Hannibal smiled sadly. 'I suspect that was also Orpheus' failure. Don't keep second guessing it all, Morgan. You and Ianthe already made a decision to make your lives have their own meaning, and frankly that's more than most natural born people manage, going by the numbers of self-lobotomised morons who willingly signed up to Promethium's mechanisation programme. Love and pain, life and death are part of what it means to be alive. To deny one is to start denying all of them, and the end result is what happened to Lar Metal… it began with assisted reproductive cloning, and ended on the slippery slope that is the quest for immortality. The end result of which is inevitably paved with bodies.'

'You make it sound as though immortality isn't a good thing. Wouldn't conquering death…' he trailed off. 'I mean, you've been around for over a century, like the captain. Aren't you…?'

Hannibal shook his head. 'I hope not, and I didn't seek it out. We're born to die, Morgan. To live past your time is to quickly realise why it's not a good thing. Long lived races like the nibelung have adapted to longer lifespans. We haven't. The machinners have already started to realise what they've given up. That's why you're here, remember? They need our brief candles to replace - even if just for a moment - what they've thrown away. And that's just in a couple of decades. Imagine what their civilisation will be like a hundred years… a thousand years from now. Personally, I hope I'm not around for that…' He sighed. 'Ask Khalsa or one of the other survivors sometime if living through these years was worth it.'

Morgan rubbed his left eyebrow. 'Most of them seem weary, most days. I guess we joke a bit about their age… but when you look it at that way…

'Youth inevitably sees age through a distorted lens, lad. When you're young, immortality goes hand in hand with your own sense of indestructibility. I've been in my fifties for a hundred years, and I can tell you now, it's hard work.'

'So living forever is something only the young would think is a good idea?' Morgan's lips twisted into a wry, self-mocking smile.

Hannibal slapped him on the shoulder. 'Makes sense when you think about it. The only true immortality any of us really need is our children. Anything else is sterile and stagnant. Kind of why evolution seems to favour sexual reproduction - I mean did you ever see a civilisation created by amoeba?'

Morgan laughed. 'Could it do much worse than humanity?' He offered his hand to Hannibal and the two men shook. 'See you down there, Admiral.' He strolled over to his shuttle, long legs eating up the distance.

A click of metal soled boots on decking alerted Hannibal that someone was nearby. Blaze stepped into sight, a tablet in hand. 'A long life isn't all that bad,' he said quietly.

'Eavesdropping?'

'You were being so eloquent I hated to interrupt.' The two men shared a smile.

'Lar Metallians engineered their longevity a long time ago,' Hannibal reminded him. 'The rest of us, not so much. Maybe if your dread aunt had limited her programme to just her own kind, it _might _have had fewer problems. The rest of us don't have that advantage, Blaze. We're _programmed_ for senescence.'

'I wonder if that's why Loki picked our world?' Blaze watched Morgan's shuttle take off and let out a deep breath. 'Like the nibelung, we have a longer view. Maybe he thought…'

'Blaze, Loki wanted the mechanisation programme for the life force it harvested. It was never about immortality. At least, not humanity's, and maybe not even the nibelung rebels. It was always about that damned gate and what's behind it. Did you read the materials from Daiba? About the metanoids history with the nibelung?'

'It only arrived a couple of hours ago. I tried. It's not my field…' he flushed under the older man's stern gaze. 'Right. I'll go back over it. But what in particular?'

_'They hunger not, neither do they thirst_.. they're darkness, and not just the absence of light. They are eternal, order in a world of chaos. A paradox in being the personification of entropy, and a remnant of the last universe. They don't evolve, Blaze. They _can't_. They go through the motions but they aren't alive in any real sense in this universe. We live, grow old and die. We evolve as a life form, and for some reason, they hate - maybe even fear that. I include the nibelung in that "we" by the way. It might explain a lot…' He ran his hands through his silvery hair and grimaced. 'These things have been around for fourteen billion years give or take, and apparently they don't change.' He sighed again. 'Never mind. Time to worry about _that _when we get back. One problem at a time. Were you lurking with intent?'

'Nero's called in, waiting for Harlock to catch up. One of the Phantasma ships has peeled off along the way. Do you think it might be heading for Ventimiglia?'

Hannibal learned against the wall with a frown. 'I hope not. That would suggest they planned on luring Khal away… which would leave no real defences… Have you spoken to your mother?'

'Better. I also called in a couple of favours. This close to Andromeda, we can call on the local branch of the Thieves - and a couple of others. Reinforcements are already en route.' He grinned. 'Though the reunion could be a little… fraught.'

'If you've spoken to who I think you have, that might be the understatement of all time,' Hannibal drawled. Blaze just grinned.

'Well, you did tell me to take the initiative,' he replied lightly.

'I trust your judgement, Blaze. But it doesn't change the fact that the people we can call upon tend to annoy each other when you put them all in the same room…'

Blaze shrugged nonchalantly. 'So we'll find an excuse to be busy elsewhere and let Mom deal with it,' he replied with a wink.

Hannibal laughed. 'Not Harlock?'

Blaze snorted. 'Hell no. Mom loves me, I'd eventually be forgiven. Harlock would have me out on the piste with a gravity sabre if I didn't run fast enough, and the bastard fights dirty…'

'You could do with a refresher,' Hannibal pointed out. He began to make his way back to the bow, walking slowly to allow Blaze to catch up. 'If you can't take him, I'll obviously have to give you a few pointers…'

Blaze groaned. 'Whose side are you on anyway?'

'The one that refuses to consider passing on this mantle to someone who can't take down that uppity outlaw - much though I love him, I still think he occasionally needs to have a reminder that he's not invincible. And since we've got at least five days travel to get to this Doppler outpost, we've got the perfect opportunity to hone your skills…'

He bit back a smile at the even louder groan beside him, and walked with a light step towards the bridge.


	19. Chapter 18

Delays are never welcome, whatever the reason. Having to hand over the body of a comrade - a friend - who you've known for almost twenty years without time for any farewell was particularly unwelcome. Even knowing that a fast cremation was safer given the possibility of Cai's body being taken over by a stray metanoid, it wasn't easy to persuade the crew that we'd have to forego our goodbyes until we returned.

Handing over a pair of trussed reboots still wearing the bodies of our companions was arguably worse, because these would have to be disposed of safely away from the colony.

'Euphemisms,' I told David/Hank rather more bluntly than was perhaps polite, judging by the sharp elbow in the side Kei gave me.

'They're already dead,' Kei said quietly. 'Don't take it out on him.'

'I'll arrange for a memorial when you return,' Selen said, stepping into the awkward silence. 'For all of them. Your friends were murdered, just as surely as Cai was.' She shot a significant glance over to where Mamoru - scuffing his boots in the sand next to the capsule that held Cai's body - and sighed sadly. 'I'll watch over him, Harlock. He took it hard. For all his bravado, he's still a boy, and one who cares deeply.'

As I watched, Mamoru shook off Rei's outstretched hand, and wandered away, down to the cliff edge in front of the Arcadia's bow where he stood facing the headwind, his hair whipped back from his face. He'd switched his white patch for a black one at some point in the last couple of hours, and watching him, one hand resting on the butt of his pistol, he looked so like his great-something grandfather - and not his namesake, for the record - I almost choked. I murmured something to Kei along the lines of dealing with the funeral arrangements and strolled over as casually as I could.

He greeted me with that barely audible grunt that translates in teenspeak to something close to "I know you're there, but I don't really want to talk about it."

I waited. I know my sons, and I didn't raise them as socially inept repressed brooders. I might be fighting fifteen hundred years of selective breeding, but I was trying my best. And eventually, he caved.

'Rick taught me to fly.'

Well, so had I and his mother, but I did my best not to take it personally.

'We didn't start out as friends when we first met,' I told him quietly. 'But we did quickly remedy that once we helped save Mistral. I learned a lot from him as well - even after he lost his arm, he was one of the best pilots I've known - and that includes Dantetsu and Hank. Trust me when I say that those responsible will pay for this.'

'Including me?' He kept staring straight ahead, into the eye-watering salty wind.

'You did what you had to do,' I told him firmly. 'That wasn't Rick, not anymore.' Coddling him at this point would be counter-productive - he - and the rest of the crew - needed to stand firm on this point. Hesitation would get us killed. 'Rick was dead, Mamoru. That's how these creatures work. What was walking around was just a shell, a puppet designed to deceive us.'

'I know that in my head,' he replied softly. 'But still…'

I turned back to where Kei, Selen, David and the heavily pregnant Ianthe were still talking, and raised my hand. When Kei looked over and started towards us I shook my head and pointed to Selen, who joined us with an inquisitorial arch of an auburn eyebrow when she drew near.

'Harlock?'

'We need to get moving. The self-repair's almost finished with the damage to the hull.' Mamoru flinched slightly and slid a sideways guilty glance my way. 'It happens,' I told him. 'Though if the entire tower had collapsed you might have found yourself grounded until you had grey hair.' I turned back to Selen. 'Let him sit in on one of the interrogations,' I told her.

Both of them gave me startled looks - more quickly smoothed over by Selen. 'I want him to understand,' I told her, but including Mamoru in my eye contact. 'You need to see for yourself,' I told him. '_Really_ see.'

'I do get it,' he started to say.

'Not yet,' I replied, a little forcefully. 'It's eating at you, and I hate to see that. This is what they do… sow doubt, and distrust. Once you see your enemy clearly, you'll understand. Look them in the eye and watch…' I placed a hand on his shoulder - rigid and stiff - and pushed him away from Selen slightly. 'It's a cold hard lesson, and I'm sorry. But you wanted to play with the big boys, Mamoru. Time to decide if you can take everything that comes with that.'

He looked at me, took a deep breath, let it out in a rush and nodded.

'Good man.' I slapped him on the shoulder and regretted it when he winced. That tension wasn't all guilt… 'And get any bruises checked over. I'm the one who has to take a lecture from your mother when she spots so much as a hangnail.'

He grinned - slightly forced, but an improvement at least. 'I'll talk to Hallie - she seems to be the medical expert around here.' He smiled - this time his incandescent natural charm wasn't faked. 'Take care, Dad. I'd hate to explain to Wataru why he won't be able to cover himself with glory taking down Captain Harlock before he makes lieutenant!'

'For that,' I muttered as an aside to Selen as he trotted over to give Kei a bear hug , 'I'm thinking you should drill him extensively in the use of the sabre he's determined to trip over…'

She laughed. 'He'll be fine.' She had to brush a thick lock of her red-gold hair from her face. Soberly she added: 'I hate sometimes that they have to grow up so fast… At least Dai and Kanna were able to have something close to a normal life, but that was never really going to be possible for yours, was it?'

I shook my head. 'We've done what we can. It's up to them now. Nami and Wataru at least have their eyes on a normal life, of sorts. Mamoru and Taro though… it really is as though the Universe wants to repeat itself…' I drew away from that as soon as it was out of my mouth, but Selen knew me too well. She gave my shoulder a squeeze, but said nothing. We walked back to the others side by side in companionable silence, and parted with the usual extortions on both sides to be careful. When the _Arcadia _lumbered into its escape trajectory in a cloud of dark matter a little later, I was cautiously optimistic about solving this pesky metanoid problem.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

* * *

Although the long runs between systems (or in this case right out into the inter galactic void) are mind numbingly boring, I'd actually been enjoying this one, after over a week spent on someone else's ship. I'd been relaxing in the captain's lushly upholstered throne, bird balanced on the backrest preening and prrking, listening to Yattaran and Kei catching up on a fortnight's worth of bitching across the gantry at each other whilst young Shiro plied me with a cinnamon latte and one of Anita's fresh pastries. Yes, we were heading into shit up to our proverbials, but what else is new? You take the little luxuries when you can get them.

I was going to have to have words with Blaze though. The sneaky little bastard keeps trying to talk Anita into joining him, and now that Zack was happily settled on Tabito with Niobe, I was beginning to worry about my ability to hold onto the best cook in several systems. I'd have a mutiny on my hands if Yattaran or Kei had to take a turn in the kitchens again.

Nero's message came through about five hours after we'd left Ventimiglia, just as I was feeding the bird with the last flaky piece of danish.

_...can't find a trace of it, _Yanez said, butting in when his captain paused for breath. _But figured your systems might be better at tracking them, since you've had more time to upgrade?_

Yattaran was hovering next to me pacing up and down next to the commsuite, muttering under his breath, with Mimay fluttering close by. Once I'd shut down the warp feed and ducked out of the cramped quarters behind the upper gantry's skull decal, I stared at the mis-matched pair. 'Well?'

'I'll get right onto tracking the wreckage of space-time they leave in their wake,' Yattaran grunted. 'But ya gotta figure we know where they're headed, right?'

'Ventimiglia's the best candidate, but it isn't the only one,' I pointed out. 'Yattaran - pull up the local sector would you, on the main viewer? Mimay… overlay the Nodes map.'

The two of them got to work and I - and the crew - stared at the result that replaced the view from the main bridge window.

It wasn't particularly crowded - there were a handful of outlying stars flung out from M31's spiral in this area, widely dispersed but still clinging on by the fingertips to their uncaring parent. Over this Mimay's long fingered hands conjured up the local nodes, of which there were three - one (astronomically) close to Ventimiglia, one in a binary system about a hundred light years away, and another in an area of space that seemed to be completely empty, which I didn't buy for an instant.

'That's about two days back on their current course,' I pointed out, arms folded and frowning. 'Franz - do we have a more in-depth scan of that empty region? Is it on Harlock's list of placements?'

It took him a few seconds to get the data. 'Good call. Mimay - I'm surprised you didn't remember?'

'There were a few locations we disregarded due to the danger involved in placing them. After all, we only needed to pull the plug, as you call it, in a precise pattern - we didn't need to blow all of them,' she replied softly, almost apologetically. She took a step closer to the map, now enhanced by the tiny stylus ring Franz had drawn around an area of space as black as that around it. 'A tiny black hole that's easily avoided as a navigational hazard, since it lies off the direct route between the galaxies.'

'But too strong even for _Arcadia _to pull free from if you tried to drop one of the oscillators into it?' I added.

'More likely you'd risk the tidal forces pulling it apart early,' Franz added. 'Which is kind of what happened in the Mazone home system, isn't it?'

'Point,' Yattaran grunted. He tugged off his bandanna and scratched at his thinning hair. 'You think they're planning on blowing these three nodes? What good would it do? There's a galaxy between these and the Gate of Yedar…'

'Zoom out,' I told him. 'Take a look at the local cluster.'

We stared at the new map - this one showing the local group. Yattaran highlighted the Hourglass Nebula without being prompted. 'It won't trip the faultline we know about,' I mused. 'But what it could do is seriously interfere with travel between M31, the Milky Way and…' I pointed to a group of wandering lines that indicated the Black Roads of dark energy that the nodes lay on like monuments on Earth's ancient ley lines '...the Magellanic Clouds both Lesser and Greater. Blow these three and most of that energy goes down the existing faultlines...'

'They want to cut us off?' Kei had tiptapped her way down to the lower bridge whilst we'd been talking.

'We need to catch these two before they separate again,' I said. 'We can't be in two places at once.'

'What about the third?' Kei linked her arm in mine and leaned close, staring at the map. 'There's no way in hell we can ignore it now, is there?'

'Mimay?'

She was ahead of me, already at her dark matter controller, feeding information into the system as though it was a part of her. The dark, sickly green contrail of that third ship appeared, on its way to the dark star.

'There's still time to intercept,' she said softly, her voice reaching us all the way from the back of the upper bridge without any need for amplification. 'You need a fast ship and a way of disabling or destroying it…'

'A dimensional oscillator should do the trick.' I ignored the rush of intaken sharp breaths. Deployed properly as intended - or thereabouts - as a way of clearing navigational hazards, they weren't _too _much of a problem - provided the Phantasma was taken out a sensible distance away from the actual node. 'We're too far out from the Milky Way for help - who's closest in Andromeda?'

_You'll need two very specific people to pull it off_, Tochiro interjected, his holo appearing in front of me. Pointless though it was, he stared at the starmap. _One with the ship, and an engineer for the oscillator. And as luck would have it, Blaze has already contacted them, albeit he'd planned for them to help out with Ventimiglia's defences_…

'There's only one ship fast enough to outpace these Phantasma that's not us, the _Miranda _or _Thunderbolt_,' Yattaran added sourly. 'Bloody marvelous…'

'Call her,' I told him bluntly. 'I've still no idea where she got that weird-ass ship or who built it, but it's the only one with the speed.'

'But not the armament,' Kei murmured.

_Hence the need for something a little less esoteric than the Deathshadow Fleet - or what's left of it_.

'And the engineer?' Yattaran asked. 'Who the hell can a: lay his paws on one of those things at short notice, and b: configure it for dispersal in combat?' Then the penny dropped. 'Oh. You know what _she'll _say to _that_…'

'Tough.' I unfolded my arms and tried to resist the urge to place a hand on the hilt of my sabre - an instinctive response when talking about one of the most dangerous people in two galaxies who isn't me. 'Tell Emeraldas to get her arse over there as fast as she can, and I don't care what she has to do, say or promise, she's to get Maetel to cough up Nazca.'

Amazing how fast a room full of supposedly tough pirates can suddenly find some pressing work to be done elsewhere. Even Yattaran found a turn of speed that was phenomenal given his bulk and short legs.

_I'll talk to her_, Tochiro said, before I could catch one of the cowardly wretches. _She likes me_.

'_Everyone _likes you,' Kei told him, leaning down to plant a kiss in the vicinity of his non-existent cheek. I managed to refrain from asking why _she _didn't volunteer to speak to Emeraldas or Maetel. The girls regard her as something of an older sister, after all, but even Kei has her limits, and dealing with that dysfunctional pair could send even a saint over the edge…

I left them to it, because I still had some repair work to check on, and we were _really _going to need those oscillator cannon back online.

* * *

Over a hundred meters of pipework doesn't come off the printers overnight, but we'd got there, and I left Maji and Doscoi directing their crews in the replacement. I was assured we'd have the starboard turrets back up and running before we rendezvoused with the _Thunderbolt_, and my engineers know better than to make promises they can't keep. I left the cramped quarters of the inner hull's access panels with a lighter step than I'd arrived, and decided that the bridge could spare me for a few hours. The bird joined me on my way to the Central Computer room, alternately nibbling on my ear and chuntering into it, until I twitched my shoulder enough to send the message that I'd like to walk upright without listing under the weight for a while, and it flew ahead of me, swooping up with as much grace as it can muster up into the rafters above the main servers.

'Well my friend? Did you get hold of Emeraldas?'

The barely audible electronic grumble told me all I needed to know. Emeraldas can be a little prickly on a good day. But she would come running for a friend, all guns blazing. The problem was going to be getting her to talk to her twin without the pair of them flying at each other. It's not that they hate each other - they don't. It would be easier if they did. But the fundamental difference of opinion on the right way to deal with their murderous, all-powerful parent can - and has - led to some epic disagreements between the pair. They didn't speak for about five years after Maetel followed her mother to Andromeda, and until the Evil Empress is finally dealt with, I can't see things improving.

The tragedy of it all is they'd die - and kill - for each other, forming ranks against any outsider stupid enough to threaten the other in a heartbeat. Bring their mother into it however, and they'll quickly end up at each other's throats.

So having Em ask May if we could borrow her beau for a dangerous mission? I was going to owe _both _of them for this one…

_Be nice to see Nazca again_, Tochiro said eventually. _It's been a while_.

'Kid's got some major smarts,' I replied. I grinned at the memory. 'Just so long as he follows orders this time…'

Tochiro laughed. _Oh hell… yes. I thought you were going to shake your Space Wolf to bits trying catch up to that little ship of his_…

'Yeah. Leave it there. I still have nightmares about that mecha-planetoid.' I stood up. 'Keep me posted. I'd like to talk to them before they engage. A little co-ordination might be in order…'

_You have a plan_?

'The beginnings of one,' I replied thoughtfully. 'Pass on what we have to Selen, she'll know what to do. Blaze has arranged reinforcements…' I almost choked on that word, because the help Blaze had asked for? Wouldn't have been my first choice. But: beggars can't be choosers, the men involved are very good at what they do, and one of them Blaze calls "uncle" so he can get away with asking for favours that I'm not prepared to swallow enough pride to repay. Something the electronic murmur suggested our existentially challenged friend was well aware of, but had decided not to call me out on this time.

I left the bird squawking conversationally at him from an overhanging cable, and made my way back to my quarters for a much-deserved nap.

* * *

I didn't get much sleep. I was turning over far too many scenarios in my head as I lay under the light covers, Kei nestled companiably at my side. Juggling so many variables, it's easy to miss one, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had, in fact, overlooked something important whilst being distracted with metanoids, pissy nibelungs, clones of old friends, and captains from my predecessor's murky past.

And to put the cherry on top of this one I'd left my son, the woman I regarded as an older sister, and her adopted android son back on Ventimiglia with only a handful of elderly ships and a couple of thousand very young clones backed by a small group of veterans. Both I and Blaze had left a few people behind to help, but even with Selen in charge, there was no way those ten ships we'd left behind would be enough, and there was a part of me that seriously considered turning back.

Judging from the little huffs and sighs against my chest, someone else was also over-thinking things, and I could guess what loomed largest. I rested my unsplinted hand on her cheek, and toyed with her hair. 'He asked to stay, Kei. We can't raise them to be independent, smart and adventurous then pull on the leash when things get tough.'

'Are you trying to convince me or yourself?' she muttered near my armpit. 'If Mimay and Freya are right, just one of those ships could destroy that planet…'

''They've been _infiltrating _this colony of Nero's,' I pointed out. 'So they want something there other than the nearby node. My guess, it's something on one of those transports.'

'Not helping,' She pointed out, a little more waspishly than normal. I pulled her close and hold her for a while before slipping out of bed. She wasn't far behind me, reaching for first her robe, then her tablet, before making herself at home on the chaise longue, curled up with her toes peeking out from under the extravagant expanse of sky blue silk. The multitude of candelabra (fake, but still impressive) that lit the room with a kind of reluctant elegance gave her pale blonde hair highlights of molten gold where it curled over her shoulder, and I watched her silently for several minutes until she looked over, smiled with that slightly embarrassed way she still has when she catches me admiring her and then went back to whatever had her attention.

I pulled on some pants and padded over to the desk - Harlock's massive, battle-scarred relic, which Hannibal had told me once graced their father's study. I wasn't sure how the hell Tochiro had gotten the heavy oak up onto the ship without the Admiralty bean-counters kicking up a stink, but their oversight was my gain. The dark, ancient oak housed a state of the art computer suite that allowed the captain unfettered access to all the ships systems and databases, as well as the interstellar warp feed, making it a hell of a lot more convenient than making my way to the bridge to use the setup located under the main gantry.

It also allowed me to place a quiet request for room service, and the door pinged only a few minutes after I'd sat down, to admit Franz bearing a tray. Kei pounced on her lemon tea and a plate of lemony biscuits before curling back up with it clutched in her hands as she sipped, and Franz deposited a steaming hot coffee pot and a couple of mugs next to me with a grin. 'Can't sleep either, captain?'

At this time of the night he deserved more than the grunt I almost gave him in reply. 'Nero's news was a bit of a game changer, but I'm damned if I know which way to jump on this.' I poured a coffee and sniffed appreciatively. 'Thanks, Franz. How come you picked up the call?'

'Couldn't sleep,' he shrugged. 'You know how it goes before a big one… We can only go as fast as we go, but you know what's waiting for you at the other end. The waiting's the hard part.' He tapped the coffee pot. 'That's not going to help you sleep though.'

There was a delicate snort from the chaise longue that I decided to ignore.

'That the stuff from Niflheim?' he asked, pointing at the screen inset into the scarred oak. 'Ali said something was coming through just before he took off with Blaze and Hannibal.' He peered at it and I raised the screen out of its niche and turned it around so he could get a better look.

'That, and the bits Mimay found in her and Tochiro's old files. Whether it makes any sense or not, I've no idea. If you can wrap your head around a non-localised phenomena that survived the contraction/expansion of the previous universe and seems to have a real hate on for our universe…'

Franz rubbed his moustache. 'Seems to me I'd be a bit resentful if my entire world crashed into a singularity and carried on without me. But doesn't that sound a bit familiar? I mean… The Captain got his info from Mimay, about pulling the plug on the universe and letting out the bathwater. Sounds to me as if maybe the Nibelung weren't talking about a theory. Maybe that's what they _did_?'

'It occurred to us as well,' Kei murmured.

'Explains a lot,' Franz opined, perching on the edge of the desk. I pushed the spare mug towards him and gestured to the coffee pot. Never one to pass up a freebie, he grinned and poured, topping me up with the remainder. 'You'd have a reason to want to destroy our universe, wouldn't you?'

'But how the hell did they survive it?' I asked. 'That's what's bugging me. From what we know, nothing should have survived.'

'The Captain,' he said after a moment's thought. 'He's kind of in an inbetween stage, right?' I waited. Outsiders might dismiss my crew as a bunch of crude screwups, and true, most of them have some personal issues, but Harlock - and I - had a knack for attracting some very bright people, in their fields, who just can't settle in "normal" societies. Franz had been a pretty hot astrophysicist in an earlier life. 'Incorporeal but everything he is - or was - is still kind of around, when the conditions are right…' He reached for my stylus, paused waiting for permission, and then scooted over when I gave him room to start drawing on the touchscreen. What he drew looked like a couple of hourglasses laid end to end.

'Standard light-cone conformal diagram,' I said as he lifted the stylus off the screen. 'The traditional model for predicting the eternal cycling of one universe into the next.' Rumours that I dozed off through most of my astro-navigation classes are completely unfounded.

'Basic cosmology,' he grinned through his lip ferret. 'A constant cycle of expansion and contraction, the information of one universe forms the basis for the next… but it has to start from scratch when it comes to anything above the quantum scale, or so we thought. The nibelung busted _that _theory because it turns out they are survivors from the previous universe to ours as well - one of darkness to our light. But we assume that these universes are cut off from each other by the Arrow of Time, right? Because you can never unscramble that cosmic egg?'

Was there ever a spaceship navigator who _didn't _love to expound on the mathematics they practically think in? If so, I've never found one. Currently I was a captive audience for two of them. I'm actually a botanist by both inclination and training… At this point you could have stuck a cabbage in place of my head and no-one would spot the difference.

'After the inflation in our universe, the background microwave radiation is scrambled egg?' Kei asked. She leaned on the high back of the chaise longue, chin resting on her folded arms, smiling. I wondered if Luna had gone to bed yet. I might be needing something for the headache soon.

'Right. But that's because _we're _bound by that arrow, and for us it's always moving in one direction, despite the fact that all laws of physics are time symmetrical. But we aren't. Why?'

'Consciousness?' I hazarded, moving officially well outside my comfort zone in an attempt to sound as though I knew what I was talking about. I can navigate through the fuzzier edges of high order physics if I _have _to but the kind of stuff Kei, Franz and Yattaran can play with for fun is why _I_ love to have a nice, friendly genius-turned-super-computer on my ship...

'That's the theory,' Franz replied, with a sympathetic grin. I should know better than to try and fool any of the old crew, but old habits die hard. 'Going against that arrow isn't impossible, but it does take cosmological orders of energy to do so. Hence the dimensional oscillators and Harlock's plan to unshackle linear time.'

'Except his plan was to simply reboot the universe by pulling the plug early.' I jabbed a finger at the light cone diagram. 'Although I suppose it's possible he thought that if the nibelung could cross that barrier, so could we…'

'Maybe I should ask him next time he pops up…' Franz said, totally serious. 'But the thing is his idea isn't totally without merit. Theoretically you _could _pull off a reversal in a limited, localised area - The Captain confined his placements of the oscillators to the local clusters, so it's possible he might have originally thought he could "push" just the Sol System and some of the closer colonies backwards against the flow?'

'Time travel?' I tried not to scoff. 'I thought the eggheads had decided you could only observe the past, never actually travel there?'

'Opinions vary,' Kei murmured. 'There was a facility on Herise a couple of hundred years ago, but it was shut down after a serious accident with their particle accelerator.'

_Accident? That's putting it mildly. I remember my grandad talking about it when I was a kid. They rendered half of the southern hemisphere uninhabitable for over a hundred years. Maya's brothers were amongst the first new settlers once the dust settled, but that continent is still off-limits._

'Couldn't sleep?' I twitted our resident ghost in the machine. 'Maybe I should just invite everyone in here…'

_Too late for the conference_, Tochiro said glibly. _We're coming out of IN-SKIP_.

'I thought we weren't due for another couple of days?' Franz wrinkled his nose as he frowned. Kei patted him on the arm.

'We aren't. But Yattaran wants to test fire the starboard cannon as soon as the coolant pipework is back in place. The last thing we want is to blow the hell out of the hull if it fails when we engage.'

'There's also the matter of a couple of tweaks to the system,' I added. 'Mimay and Tochiro have had their heads together, and I'd rather know now if it isn't going to work.'

'How will you know?' Franz asked. 'If we're fighting a dark matter battleship, what do you test this stuff on?'

Sometimes I wished these guys were as dumb as everyone else thinks they are. 'We can't test it in combat,' I told him. 'The best we can do is proof of concept.'

'But... '

'I know. We can test fire the weapons to make sure they don't go off in our faces, but we won't know if we're just firing blanks until we actually engage,' I explained. Franz looked a little green around the gills, and I didn't blame him.

_Don't worry_, Tochiro said glibly, his hologramme aiming a pat in the general area of Franz's left arm. _It's not like it's mine and Mimay's first rodeo_…

I honestly didn't dare look at the other two over his insubstantial head. Instead I made my excuses and headed for my dressing room, leaving Kei to show Franz the door. His voice floated towards my back laden with predictable sarcasm: 'Because what could _possibly _go wrong with that?'

Tochiro's sniffy reply was equally predictable: _I thought we sent Ali off with Hannibal…? _Was the last thing I heard before I shut the door.


	20. Chapter 19

_**Thunderbolt**_

Yanez looked up and across from the navigation console as Nero paced backwards and forwards, his sabre tapping against his boots as he walked restlessly up and down the gantry. 'What is keeping him?'

'Will you just sit down? You're making us all dizzy,' Yanez told him. It earned him a black-browed scowl and a growl. 'We can't do anything until those ships are out of IN-space. Harlock will be here - if anything he's making excellent time. You were right about one thing - that baby may look like something out of the circles of Hell, but she has some moves…'

'With Tochiro working on her for a century, I'm not surprised. But I suspect her IN-space deep immersion and speed are a product of their plan to try and nail as many of those "nodes of time" as possible as quickly as they could. I just hope they paid as much attention to her armaments…'

Yanez leaned on his console. 'My brother, given the stories I've heard from the delightful Princess Selen and her son, during the Machine War they scared the living daylights out of their foes. I don't see _that _part of this engagement being a problem. However, this man is not _your _Harlock - I've heard you speak of his ability to haul victory from the jaws of certain defeat often enough over the years, but this one… he talks a good fight, but…' he straightened and gestured towards the main viewer despite the display being rather featureless, 'We've yet to see him in action on this scale. I just hope he's as good as his reputation…'

'If he wasn't I suspect he'd be long dead,' Nero pointed out evenly.

'His record doesn't mention any command before he inherited _Arcadia_,' Yanez pointed out with studied blandness. 'And his academic record at the Academy is a little... spotty… the man was mostly his brother's gopher…'

'According to Mamoru, that academic record is a little suspect, given that the brother didn't want his pet chew toy to get any ideas of independence. We went after him for help, it's a little late for second guessing that decision now, my brother.' He laid a hand on Yanez' shoulder. 'If I'm wrong, it's not as though we'll be agonising over it for very long.'

Yanez turned his attention back to the controls. 'Well that's encouraging, do you work on these inspirational speeches?'

'No, I get Dione to write them.' Nero jabbed a finger at the screen. 'Time to move, little brother. Our guests are arriving…'

'Time-radar showing both ships exiting IN-space,' Yara called out. '_Arcadia_ in range, maybe five minutes behind us and closing.'

Nero strode back to his chair and sat down with a flourish of his cape, flicking it and his sabre out of the way with well-practiced grace. 'Freya - three-quarters ahead. All hands to battlestations. Yanez - put us right where we can fly between those nightmares. All cannon crews standby to fire on my mark. Target both vessels, enfilading fire both broadsides as we pass through, then bring us around to target the starboard vessel. Get me Harlock on the comms.'

'Comms aye,' Jacopo, a dark haired, olive-skinned young man called out. '_Arcadia_ on main holoscreen.'

'Nero?' Harlock's hologramme was faint but the audio was clear.

'Making the first pass now, Harlock, then we'll bring one of them to you - make sure you ram everything you've got down it's throat, my newfound friend.'

'Bring it on, Nero. Then get yourselves out of our line of fire. Let's hope they're dumb enough to take the bait…'

'With what I'm about to unload on their arses? They're going to want some payback,' Nero answered with a toothy, almost feral grin. He cut the connection and sat back in the captain's chair. 'Yanez.'

The fair-haired second in command grinned nastily, and gave the order to leave IN-space.

* * *

The _Thunderbolt _arrived in normal space in a swirling cloud of dark matter, the lights on her flanks and upper elevation glinting through the writhing darkness like flashes of scarlet lightning. Ahead, the two Phantasma vessels were just darkness against the darkness, made visible on the ship's main viewer only by the false-colour software that allowed objects to be seen clearly by the more fragile inhabitants of the kilometre-long ship. Absolute speed is almost impossible to judge in the interstellar void, with little background detail to use as a reference point, but she accelerated swiftly to her maximum cruising speed in seconds, chasing down the black-ribboned ships ahead of her with the implacable grace of the predator she was.

The Phantasma vessels were faster than expected at firing, but ranging their weapons was not so easy. The shots sailed harmlessly around the _Thunderbolt's_ sleek flanks as she closed with the larger ships. This close the sensors were able to measure the displacement of local space, and the Phantasma easily massed more than double the Thunderbolt's considerable draught.

Then she was hurtling into the gap between the two ships. 'Fire!' Nero ordered.

The _Thunderbolt's_ thirty-six dimensional particle oscillator cannon fired in unison, strafing both ships simultaneously in a continuous broadside as she shot through the gap that on screen looked ridiculously close, although in reality it bordered on close to half an AU between the ships

'Sort out your time on target!' Nero called out. 'Turret three, get your firing rate synchronised! Secondary particle cannon - hold back.'

'Return fire incoming!' Yara called out.

'Brace for impact!' Nero shouted. He gripped the arms of his chair tightly, as the real-time display showed the tracks incoming from the Phantasma.

'In three, two…' Five separate bolts hit the _Thunderbolt_, albeit with mercifully glancing blows. The bridge was rocked by the impacts, at least three crew losing their balance and taking hard falls to the metal floor. Yanez gripped the sides of his console and gritted his teeth. 'Damage?' he called out.

'Port and starboard hull self-repair at work. Nothing got through the inner hull. One shot hit the underbelly, ripped a hole right through and missed life support backups by a couple of feet. Be a bit hot in there for a while, hull's already sealing the breach. Minimal damage to systems. No major casualties but a few minor injuries being called in.' Jacopo replied.

'We have their attention!' Yanez called back to his captain. 'They're following…'

'We only want one of them, Yanez - that was the plan. Bring us back around and cut out that single vessel.'

'I would,' Yanez grunted as his hands danced over the controls, 'But they seem to be a couple… Bloody hellfire, you little bastard, just stand still!'

'Freya!' Nero called back.

Behind the captain's chair the nibelung girl's elegant long fingered hands floated over and around the glowing control ball as though she conducted a symphony only she could hear, and the massive overhead arch rolled around at an ever increasing speed, the ship throbbing as she increased the power to both the engines and the shield.

'Full power to the front shield!' Nero called out. 'Yanez - put us down its throat.'

'I thought we weren't doing that again?' Yanez shouted back over the hum of the dark matter engine.

'When did I promise that?' was Nero's pithy reply, with a manic grin. He leaned forward in his chair, his dark eyes seemingly glittering. 'Secondary particle cannon - fire!'

The forward facing top turrets opened fire, the twelve barrels unleashing their deadly stream as they raced towards the Phantasma. With such a narrow profile head-on they provided the other ship with a difficult target - or would, had the Phantasma not been able to bring its armaments to bear with uncanny speed and precision. Several shots barely missed the bridge, warped out of line only by the dark matter cloud, and several crewmen flinched as the shots cleared the viewscreen by what looked like centimetres. 'They'll have our measure on the next pass,' Yanez told Nero bluntly. 'Are you seriously going to ram them?'

'Hold your course,' Nero told him. 'And your nerve.'

'I'd hold my godsbedamned cock if it'd help,' Yanez muttered under his breath. 'You're a fucking lunatic, my friend.'

The spinning top of darkness that was the Phantasma loomed closer… closer. Yanez wanted to wipe away the cold trickle of sweat that ran down his back, but it was already heading into the crease of his spine where his pants were cinched. 'I thought ramming these things was supposed to be a seriously bad idea?' he muttered.

'Aren't you taking the helm?' Freya asked Nero.

'I rather thought _that _was the helmsman's job,' Nero drawled, sitting back in his chair, and ignoring the sly, tinkling snigger from behind him. 'I've never quite trusted those wheels, despite Tochiro's assurances,' he explained over his shoulder.

'It's more responsive than people think,' Freya told him, not taking her eyes off her control globe. 'It operates rather like the old reaction wheels for three dimensional attitude adjustment, but much more sophisticated. The gyroscopic sensors are incredibly sensitive…'

'And there's his problem right there,' Yanez added, his own eyes fixed on his display. 'Ham fisted bugger…' He grunted as the ship had to dodge another blast as it nosed forward. 'Sod this. Jacopo - take over here will you. The little girl's right. We need the finer control…' He took the normal three strides to the ship's wheel in two bounds and took hold of the balusters. 'Disengage auto nav and transfer control to the auxiliary helm.' He didn't wait for the acknowledgement, his fingers feeling the slight vibration that signalled the ship's attitude controls coming online. 'Seriously - Harlock uses this as his main helm? The guy is nuts…' Deft hands span the wheel a fraction, avoiding the next wave and correcting their course to keep the ship bearing down on their quarry.

A blast rocked the bridge and several consoles flashed red. 'That was the side!' Jacopo called out. 'That second ship's got our range!'

'Where the bloody hell is Harlock?' Yanez pulled back slightly on the helm and the ship responded by nosing up to aim at the top of the Phantasma.

Thirty six trails of blinding light - had anyone been of a mind - or quick enough - to count them - flashed by the conning tower closely followed by ghostly, glowing red eyes gleaming out from the roiling depths of a black cloud.

'That answer your question?' Jacopo whooped, grinning from ear to ear. 'Hot damn, that ship is _fast…'_

'Mind on the target!' Nero snapped. 'Why aren't we gaining on that thing?'

'She's running… accelerating to try and spin round on us. Good news - she's moving out of range - bad news, if we don't go now, we'll be on the wrong side of this!' Yanez told him.

'All ahead full!' Nero snapped. 'Yanez - up and over! All turrets to port!'

Freya coaxed the engines into giving her more power, the bridge lit from behind Nero's chair by a pale blue glow that brightened as the drive circuit that orbited the bridge began to spin faster, the ever-present hum deepening to a soft roar.

'Are you mad?' Yanez almost yelped as he began to turn the ship as she accelerated. 'Last time we tried that…'

'There's less dark matter at the poles of that thing!'

'Told…' Freya murmured to herself, smiling cheekily as Yanez muttered and obeyed, bringing the ship into a fast, hard roll as they caught up to and flipped to bring the ship above and parallel to the Phantasma they chased, her main battery ratcheting around her circumference to face the pointed top elevation of the Phantasma before she could roll her ribbons of dark matter into place.

'Fire!' Nero's voice was firm and calm.

The _Thunderbolt_'s thirty six guns spat fire in rapid, precise sequence, each shot landing simultaneously, piercing the thinner dark matter mantle at this point. The Phantasma's dark ribbon wobbled and destabilised, thrown out of alignment by the attack. Brief flashes illuminated the eternal night, as the vessel underneath those wreaths of black smoke briefly wobbled under the assault. A walnut shaped vessel briefly appeared before the dark matter re-established itself.

'Anything on the sensors?' Nero called out, once the cheers on the bridge had subsided, and Yanez brought the ship back around for a second pass.

'No sign of atmosphere leaking, but structural damage looks bad. The dark matter's coalescing…'

'Nero!' Harlock's hologramme appeared in the space between the captain's chair and the wheel. 'Before the auto-repair finishes, target that same spot - Tochiro says if we both hit it, it'll crack like an egg!'

'The second ship…' Nero began.

'Take your shots at this one and peel off on a wide catenary - trust me - I've got this, but you need to get clear. We'll finish this one and follow you. Go!'

'IFF locked in,' Yara told Nero. 'Harlock's making his run. Unless he runs into our fire at least we won't shoot him on purpose.'

'How the hell can he move that ship around so fast at those speeds?' Nero muttered. 'Even with the AI, we've never…'

'Tochiro.' Freya told him. 'But I can get you more speed if you need it…'

'I need it, little girl. Full shields to port flank. All weapons - prepare to fire.'

'Aren't we asking for a surrender?' Jacopo asked, more from habit than any real conviction. When neither Nero nor Yanez bothered to reply he glanced at Yara and shrugged. 'Fair point…' She smiled as she bent her head back over her own console.

For the first time in over a century, ships from the Deathshadow fleet charged into the fray side by side.

* * *

_**Arcadia…**_

'The second ship…' Nero began.

'Take your shots at this one and peel off on a wide catenary - trust me - I've got this, but you need to get clear. We'll finish this one and follow you. Go!'

The _Thunderbolt _was already peeling away before I'd cut the connection. On screen the it was already racing towards the damaged Phantasma, dark matter contrails swirling in its wake. We'd come out of IN-space practically on top of them, giving the metanoid vessels scant time to react, but I had no doubt that once the shock wore off, they'd be after us.

The trick would be to keep them off balance. I threw the wheel around hard, taking the ship into a steep dive perpendicular to our long axis. The effect was similar to gaining height in a steep ascent in gravity, with the same intent - to bring us in on the "bottom" elevation of the Phantasma - and that was making one hell of an assumption about the plane they were travelling in - given their shape, only the direction of travel gave us any indication of their orientation. I could make a pretty good guess about front and back - top and bottom? That was pure guesswork. In space, down is the direction your feet are pointing.

_Thunderbolt's _main battery fired, her gunnery crew only slightly out on time on target - that third turret was a little out, arriving slightly behind the others by 0.3 of a second. Something not lost on Kei, who commented with smug satisfaction.

'Don't gloat,' I told her, 'Make sure _our _guys know to be spot on…'

She grinned at me across the gantry, and Yattaran barked out a laugh. 'Bet yer wishing you hadn't sent Ali off with the raiding party…'

'Not at all,' I replied smoothly, as I pulled an outer loop and began our dive. 'Gives the rest of the crew an opportunity to show me what they can do.'

'Oh…' someone muttered loudly from below. 'No pressure there then…'

'All guns forward!' I called down. 'Main and secondary batteries fire on my mark.' If I hadn't been holding onto the balusters, I'd have crossed my fingers. The coolant delivery system had been repaired, but not fully tested. However we had no time for half measures on the guns. They'd held up for that first pass. Now I just had to trust in my engineers.

'_Thunderbolt_ clear!' Kei called out.

'Fire!'

On my order the batteries opened fire on the reeling Phantasma. The ever-circling ribbon of dark matter faltered, the precise spirals disintegrating into a misty vapour trail winding its way around the vessel within. I grinned. 'Yattaran.'

'Aye aye, sir!' He grinned back just as nastily, and called up our little surprise. 'Optical cannon - fire!' he shouted. 'All hands brace for ramming attack!'

Our recently-adjusted point defence array fired, even as the bow of the ship responded to the unspoken command I sent to the central computer, and began to pull in the dark matter shield to form the bowie-knife shaped ram. The photonic beams didn't reach the Phantasma- they weren't designed to. Instead they too were pulled into the bow's remodelling, coalescing around the ramming blade, infusing it as well as forming a new, golden, flickering edge of bright light.

'Main battery!' Kei shouted. 'Harpoons away!'

The main guns spat again, dispersed in part by the dark matter shield, which even in its current state was enough to deflect our beams. No matter, that's what it was supposed to do. Whilst their shield struggled to reform, our harpoons fired and smashed into the hull, holding the ship in place for the few critical seconds we needed to do what we did so well.

'All weapons!' I called out, as we closed.

Only an idiot rams another ship head on, without softening up their target first. _We _can get away with it because of our dark matter infused hull, but against another such vessel, that was always going to be tough. The new tactic we'd been trialling partly against Loki's rebels when we'd come across them. With the frequency modulation Mimay, Freya and Tochiro had worked out based on that old nibelung tablet, I had to hope we'd disrupted their auto-repair enough to make what I was about to do marginally less suicidal.

We struck the Phantasma amidships barely two seconds after our shots hit her, disengaging the harpoons as we hit. Enhanced by the photonic beams of the modified spacebusters, the ramming blade pierced her like a hot knife through butter, her weakened hull no match for the force of our attack. Physics, mostly, was on our side. The ship parted and crumpled as we flew through her wreckage. Two armoured humanoid figures bounced off the windshield, making at least a couple of the crew jump.

The armour was possibly not so surprisingly very similar to our own nibeling inspired suits, only silver rather than brass in finish.

I pulled the _Arcadia _into a sharp turn and brought her down to bear on the second ship the moment we were clear of the debris. Nero was coming in on a parallel vector, and we fired almost simultaneously on the remaining ship, which lurched and began to spin around, rather like the spinning top it resembled.

'Their drive signature's not looking too great,' Yattaran called out, yelling in my ear. 'The one we just hit's about to go critical…'

'I'm aware of that!' I snapped back. This was the tricky part. We passed the _Thunderbolt _by inches, cosmologically speaking, the image on the screen looking almost close enough to reach out and touch.

'Warning,' Franz called out. 'Objects in your viewscreen might be closer than they appear…' A ripple of laughter ran around the lower bridge.

'If I had a credit…' I muttered. 'Mimay - dark matter shield - full power!'

In planning this on the way, our two lovely nibelung had devised a plan… We were now about to see if they could pull it off.

The dark matter clouds surrounding our two ships merged. In perfect synchronisation, our overarching dark matter antennae began to unfurl, gathering the dark matter and directing it at a particular region of space close by.

Try maneuvering at these speeds. These ships do _not _stop on a credit and give change, and I'd been betting on the Phantasma being no better in that regard. The surviving ship was apparently heading straight towards us, at what was possibly close to her top speed.

I do love being right. It had crossed my mind that these creatures were not familiar with the laws of this universe, and sure enough, they were acting accordingly. Our battle, utilising weapons capable of taking out small planets, had subtly warped local space-time, making the instrumentation very, _very _slightly off.

We're used to it, and our crews - and our onboard computers - can compensate. It isn't much, but over the distances we're looking at, a fraction of a centimetre or a second out can be miles off target by the time you reach where you think you're going…

And both the Deathshadows have very powerful hologramme arrays, that utilise dark matter to simulate mass readings in the projection zone. Don't ask me how it works, I just fly the ship…

So they were flying blindly right for the remains of their sister ship, thinking they were aiming at us…

Synchronised with the _Thunderbolt's_ AI, Tochiro pulled both ships out of harm's way and into an emergency deep IN-SKIP fractions of a second before the second Phantasma hit the remains of the first…

...and the modified photon torpedoes we and _Thunderbolt _had laid down under cover of our shields and our over-powered main guns.

Quick as we were, the edge of the blast still caught up with us as we winked out of normal space leaving them to briefly suffer our exhaust, rocking the ship slightly. And something gave way on the port flank, because the ship listed violently as an explosion sent Kei flying into me on one side, and Yattaran almost fell over the railing on the other. I gave her a little push upright, and she flashed me a wry smile. Yattaran I left to pick himself up. 'What went?' I asked, once he was back at his station.

He peered at the readouts. 'Main battery - something internal…'

Shit. 'Kei?'

She was already calling Maji up on the internal comms. 'Engineering? What just blew?'

On speaker, just static. I frowned.

_Harlock… _Tochiro's voice was only audible to myself, Kei and Mimay, judging from the reactions. Mimay limped forward, another casualty I supposed of the shaking a moment ago. _Those repairs to the main guns_…

'Go,' Kei told be grimly. 'We're out of the fire for now. Franz - take my station! I'll take the helm.'

I left her to it, and took off for the port battery at a run.

* * *

Luna's team had beaten me to it by seconds, and my doctor and her two helpers were all gathered around two figures, one slumped against the wall, the other more worryingly lying prone with both Luna and one of her nurses hovering over him. 'Who's hurt?'

Maji, against the wall, tried to wave at me, only to be snapped at by his ministering angel. His hands and arms were already swathed in gel, and through the thick coating even from my position several feet away looked red and sore, as did his face, which Mario was already slathering with burn gel.

The figure on the floor was Doscoi, and as I strode towards him, Luna sighed, reached across and placed his bandanna over his face. I knelt beside her and laid a hand on her arm. 'Doc?' I asked softly. She leaned briefly against me.

'That damned coolant,' she said eventually. 'There was a blockage, and he went in to take that battery offline. Should have waited…' her head sagged against my shoulder.

'He couldn't.' Maji struggled to his feet, helped by Mario. Mio, Luna's other assistant, moved in to steady him, and the engineer leaned gratefully on her. 'There was a section with some residue we missed that started to polymerise and block one of the pipes. Had to vent it manually or the explosion would have been _inside_… I tried to pull him free, but…'

There was nothing I could do for the dead. The living needed me more. I laid my hand briefly on the top of Doscoi's silvering fair head and called over a couple of the men who seemed shell-shocked but ambulatory. 'Take him to the morgue,' I told them. 'Gently.' I disentangled myself from Doc and made my way over to Maji, who stared up at me numbly.

'I should have gone in there,' he mumbled. A quiet man even at the best of times, he opened and shut his mouth a couple of times before forcing the words out. 'I'm smaller, I wouldn't have got stuck…'

'He was in Engineering,' one of his assistants piped up. Mario was pressing a pad against a nasty cut on his face. 'No way in hell you could have got here in time, Chief, and you know it. Doscoi didn't give any of us time to step forward - just kinda grunted, pulled off the access plate and stuck his head in there. But if he hadn't…'

_If he hadn't_, Tochiro said on my personal frequency, _this whole section would have been open to space, and we'd have lost maybe ten men - that section of the pipework runs past the secondary battery power lines._

He didn't need to continue painting the picture. The power requirements for these weapons is off-the-charts crazy, and whilst the main and secondary batteries have separate systems, there's not that much room to spare that they don't have some overlap with their systems. You can't isolate these things completely, because they ultimately use the same power source and coolant storage.

'Still shoulda tried harder…' Maji mumbled again.

Doc strode past me, grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. She's a tall woman - he had to raise his eyes slightly to look her in the eye. 'Bullshit, Chief. It was brave, but once he inhaled that stuff, he was dead. His lungs will be full of it. What's more he knew the risk going in, and he accepted it.'

Accepted maybe, but drowning in that caustic gloop as it solidifies in your lungs? It was a fucking awful way to die, and we all knew it. Maji certainly understood it, and his numb misery would eat at him for a long time.

I could, however, distract him for the short term. 'Chief - if you're fit enough gather some men and assess the damage. We can't replace that array until we land and can set the printers to work, but make sure the ratchets are free of debris so we can use what's left. Bypass whatever systems need taking offline if you can't safely patch the coolant delivery system, and just make safe. The hull can take care of itself. We've got a few days to get back to Ventimiglia, make the most of them.'

Doc gave me a what-the-fuck look, then realised my tactic and sighed. Maji opened and shut his mouth a couple of times like a gasping carp, then nodded, and began rounding up his crew. There were a couple of guys with leg injuries, and I volunteered my services alongside Mario to help them back to sick bay, Luna keeping pace with me easily, muttering to herself under her breath and every so often yanking on her ponytail.

'Do I have to find you something to do?' I asked.

'Never works on me,' she replied, rather more sharply than I think she intended. After taking a deep breath she exhaled sharply then continued: 'Oh _fuck_, Harlock.' She slammed a small fist into my upper arm. He could be a complete arsehole, but he was good at his job, and the men liked him despite his personality quirks. 'Why couldn't this ship's repair work on the men the way it repairs the damn hull? It's so fucking inconsistent… I'd love to be out of a job.'

'Speaking from the peanut gallery,' Randall - the gunnery tech I was helping to limp into the infirmary - piped up, 'It's not all it's cracked up to be.' He looked up at me as I helped him onto the edge of the gurney. 'Right, captain?'

'True enough. Frankly I'd be worried if it did more than deal with skin-deep injuries. I'd not trust the stuff to put things back in the right place… it's not as though we have the built-in memory the hull has.' I slipped his arm off my shoulder. 'Good to go?' I asked him. He nodded.

'Thanks, captain.'

I just grunted. Truth to tell the issue of the _Arcadia's _dark matter repairs and how it treated the crew were a long-standing worry I tried hard not to think about too often.

One thing did occur belatedly, before I left Luna looking longingly at the bottle of single malt on her desk in the other room. 'Luna - about the body,' I said quietly, drawing her aside. 'Just to be on the safe side…'

'I'm ahead of you there,' she told me. Bits of her ponytail were already escaping from their bonds and falling around her face. 'My standing orders now are to place bodies straight into the tubes. I know we can't hold them until we get home, not until we understand more about the metanoids and how they sequester corpses.'

'We'll drop out of IN-SKIP within the hour,' I replied. 'The burial detail should meet in the forward torpedo room, and I'll place the main gun crew on the job, since we're a little short of suns out here.' I started for the door, only to be brought up by her hand gripping the fabric of my jacket.

'Harlock…'

I could only shake my head in reply, because really, what was there to say? The Mazone had been a fearsome enemy, the Machinners a continuing thorn in our side, but this time we were currently well out of our depth. The time radar would confirm if we'd trashed the Phantasma, but honestly, it wasn't the ships that really worried me. However, there was still one ship out there, which we were relying on Emeraldas and Nazca to deal with. Hopefully they'd had enough lead time to get to the dark star ahead of it.

I just hoped Hannibal and Selen between them were having a better day than I was.


	21. Chapter 20

The _Tonnerre _flew over the waves with an ease and grace that defied the effort needed by her crew to make that possible. Dozens of men and women scampered around the deck tying and untying ropes, hauling on lines and beams, cleaning, polishing, climbing with apparent disregard for safety into the swaying rigging with no visible means of support, all whilst the ship itself seemed determined to wallow, dip, bounce, and do everything but actually take off in thrall to the fickle ocean surface and the winds that whipped its surface into a fine foam on the peaks of the smaller waves.

Rei tried to push his unruly, salt-soaked mass of black hair back out of his eyes, and tried not to obviously cling to the sides of the ship with gloved fingers. Judging from the slight crack he'd left in one railing, he wasn't doing too good a job of it so far. He'd shuffled away from the tell-tale splinters hoping no-one would notice it. With any luck one of the insane idiots clambering around those fifty foot or more masts like a demented monkey on a bad acid trip would fall on it and the damage would be lost in the wreckage… He peered more closely and groaned inwardly, since one of those demented monkeys was his regular partner in mischief and mayhem - or as his parents liked to call him, Mamoru.

Selen appeared at his side before he noticed her, her approach masked by the ongoing activity and his preoccupation with the grey, churning waters he just couldn't stop staring at. Waters that could close over a hapless android's head should he be unlucky enough to fall in… cutting him off from the light as he fell several miles into ever-increasing darkness, through the dancing drifts of marine snow, to land on the cold, silted floor below, there to lie for an eternity, staring up into the blackness, for a ray of light that would never come whilst generations of sea-creatures chewed on his self-repairing hide…

_Poke_. A finger jabbed gently into his ribs.

He glanced around and gave his adopted mother a wan smile. Over his other shoulder Motherball hovered, gauges facing the waves as though they fascinated her. Selen's wide smile elicited a similar response from him by instinct. 'Staring into the abyss?' she twitted him.

He shrugged. 'Kinda. It's weird. I can handle stuff that would kill most humans… but out here, on the ocean? It's a level playing field. Look at it, mom. It's an environment almost as deadly as space.' His hand waved vaguely to take in the distant horizon where fluffy clouds gleamed a bright yellow-orange in the clear air. 'Humans came from the water, your bodies are mostly water, but you can't breathe it or live in it.' He paused then laughed. 'Okay. Before you remind me, I know, I know, the aquatics do well enough…'

'Still have to come up for air every so often,' she replied. The wind whipped her auburn hair around her face and heavy, wet strands slapped into his. 'Sorry.' She pulled the long mass into a quick plait. 'You know, you do not have to face it head on, you could wait below decks until we get there. We're a couple of hours out at most.' She turned back and looked up into the rigging, one hand shielding her eyes against the sun. 'Dammit, does he have to do that? Harlock will kill me if anything happens to him…'

Laughter and catcalls floated down to them from the rigging, where Mamoru, aided by a couple of the crew, was helping to haul in one of the heavy sails.

'I guess I'm not the only one who thinks he has something to prove…'

'Rei darling, you were _nine _and it was freshwater. Your body isn't as dense now as it was then - you're probably at least a _little _more buoyant than you think.'

'Psychic, much?' She smiled enigmatically without answering, and he jabbed a finger at the roiling waves. 'But I'd rather not test it if you don't mind.' The ship dipped rather violently at that point, and he made a grab for the rail. 'Great timing,' he muttered, then a gasp nearby drew his attention. Above, on the main spar of the tallest mast, a figure was clinging helplessly to the rigging. 'Mamoru…' A crew member was inching towards him, but another wave rocked the ship, and Mamuru lost his grip and began to fall…

...to hover in place below the spar, motionless in the air. Gasps from the surrounding crew and a murmur of amazement rippled through the crowd on the deck, all eyes staring at the youth. Rei glanced at his mother and saw her standing, one arm outstretched, her eyes fixed on that lanky figure. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her breathing sounded a little laboured.

'It's okay! He's on a rope!' someone called out. The man crawling along the spar reached down and grabbed hold of an outstretched hand. Laughing nervously, Mamoru let himself be hauled back to safety, but Rei noticed he was quick to scramble back to the relatively safer deck. Selen lowered her hand and sagged against Rei, who placed a steadying arm around her.

'I thought you weren't supposed to do that without one of the queens' crowns,' he muttered into her ear. A few of the crew gave them strange looks, but few seemed to have noticed the intervention, most probably attributing it to the belaying safety rope.

'They help with focus and provide a boost for larger targets, but it's possible to use telekinesis on smaller objects without them. I'm just out of practice.' Selen sucked in a few deep breaths as Mamoru walked towards them with a jaunty stride. 'A _lot _out of practice,' she added with a shaky laugh, one which Mamoru answered with a slightly sickly grin, quickly wiped off his face when Rei punched him on the arm as he drew level. 'Hey!'

'You worried mom,' Rei snapped at him. 'Made her tee-kay you. Showing off up there…'

'Rei.' Selen's voice was quiet but assertive. 'I can deal with this. Why don't you make sure that drive's ready to move once we reach the island?' When he opened his mouth to refuse she lifted a finger, and he shut his mouth with a snap. Sulkily, he shuffled off to the door leading below deck, in the underside of the poop deck. Selen turned to Mamoru with a sigh. 'You make it hard to keep you safe, you do know that?'

He gave her a peck on the cheek. 'Sorry Aunt Selen - but they had me on a line - wouldn't let me up without one.' He rubbed at his ribs with a rueful grin on his face. 'Got a squeeze from that _and _your helpful invisible hand though. But thanks for the assist.' He glanced over to where Rei had vanished. 'Seriously - is he really pissed at me?'

She smiled. 'More worried I think. You scared him half to death with that fall, though he hates to admit it.'

Mamoru pulled a face. 'He worries about you as well. That thing with the…' he waved one arm around pointing at the mast he'd fallen from, 'takes a lot out of you, if I remember correctly? Isn't that a trick your sister could pull?'

'Part and parcel of the package,' she replied vaguely. 'All the cloned potential queens have both telepathic and telekinetic abilities.'

'But didn't Promethium hold back an earthquake once? Yet just holding me…'

'Yayoi was wearing the crown at the time. It allows the wearer to amplify and focus their ability by several factors. She used it several times, though it almost killed her to pull some of the stunts she did. Overreach yourself, and there's no coming back.'

'Back?'

She turned and leaned on the railing vacated by Rei, staring out over the ocean as the ship cut through the waves. 'Like running downhill - once you start, you can't stop. If you apply yourself to a job too big, and can't finish it, you can pour so much of yourself into it that you can't stop. You're a conduit for the power - you can draw so much safely, but too much and you blow a fuse. Don't forget you're basically trying to fly in the face of physical forces at the most fundamental level. It was a dangerous enhancement to make - the human body hasn't really evolved to cope properly yet.' She suddenly pointed. 'I think that's our destination.'

Mamoru leaned on the railing next to her and stared in the direction she pointed. Up ahead was a small atoll - part of a small chain, he realised, as they drew closer, spotting several sharp peaks on the horizon. Volcanic, unless he'd forgotten all those extra lessons with Ali over the years. He squinted, wishing for a telescope at this point for a closer look. The ship was heading for a break in what looked like a circular wall. 'A caldera?'

'Certainly looks that way,' Selen told him. 'What better place to sink the transports, when you think about it? There's apparently only this one way in, the remains of the shield wall make it a natural fort, and it's deep enough to mask the ships from a casual fly-over, but not so deep they can't be easily accessed.'

'Unless the idea of what could happen when more than twenty hyperspace drives are in the path of millions of tons of molten magma fill you with dread,' Mamoru replied glibly. Halia, passing by on her way to the helm gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

'Relax - this was a convoy, there's only one drive, on the tug. And the last time that thing blew was around the time modern humans were evolving on Earth, or so we're informed. It's extinct.'

'Or overdue,' Mamoru said dryly. Halia just beamed at him.

'Relax. This particular island isn't sitting over the hot spot anymore. That'd be the one about a couple of hundred miles to planetary east,' she said, pointing to a column of smoke on the distant horizon puffing out "I'm sitting on a deadly magma plume" into the air for the benefit of those watching.

Mamoru turned back to Selen as the young woman continued on her way, shouting orders to the crew. 'She does know how far magma chambers can extend, right? Or do we need to get Ali back to give them some overdue lessons in vulcanology?'

Selen gave him a small push in the direction Rei had taken earlier. 'What did your father tell you about looking for trouble?'

'Usually, that I wouldn't need to,' he drawled. 'He does keep muttering something about genetics periodically…'

She chuckled. 'I think we can safely say it's as much down to environment than breeding,' she told him as they both ducked under the lintel. The corridor beyond was narrow and cramped, and she led the way, passing by two small doors before they reached the room where the dark matter drive was stored. 'Otherwise…' she trailed off.

'...you'd be worried about turning into a murderous tyrannical bitch?' he added for her.

'That's possibly a little harsh,' she chided gently, her hand hovering over the door handle. 'Yayoi didn't really begin to fall apart until she replaced our "mother".'

'You're responsible for almost as many people as she was, given the reach of the em-tees,' Mamoru said quietly. 'You've seen horrors beyond imagining, fought monsters, two major wars and you're the nicest, sweetest person I know who isn't one of my parents, aunt Selen.'

'Oh, Mamoru,' she sighed sadly. 'If you knew the things I've done…'

It wasn't easy from his position behind her, and in the cramped quarters, but he dropped a quick kiss on the side of her head. 'You sound like dad.' Before they entered the room he added: 'Out of interest - did your's and Zero's kids inherit that psychic thing?'

'It doesn't have full penetrance,' she replied as they entered. 'As far as I've been able to tell, none of them shows any abilities along those lines.'

'What lines?' Rei looked up from the device that occupied a heavy wooden table in the middle of the room, his long nose twitching slightly.

'Just asking about whether or not the magic runs in the family,' Mamoru told him as he sauntered over. He ignored the slight form of the nibelung who lurked on the far side of the small cabin, sorting several brassy fittings into neatly ordered rows. 'Is it ready?'

'Well it's ready to install. Yngwie here says it's good to go.' He stepped away from the table to let his mother and Mamoru get a better look at the dark matter engine.

It was an elegant device - a collection of pipes and rotating gears in an antique silver finish, it resembled the bastard offspring of an orrery and a pipe organ. A fraction of the size of its big cousin on board Arcadia, this was about eighteen inches across, and although heavy, just about passed for man portable. The several circles moved in strange and charming orbits, at times moving in patterns that seemed to pass through other parts of the machine, sometimes vanishing from sight altogether before reappearing in a totally different configuration. Mamoru shook his head as though to clear it. 'Damn… I can never follow the path of those things.'

'Unless you can visualise the universe in all eleven dimensions,' Yngwie piped up from his place at the small bench to the rear of the cabin, 'You can't. You also need to be able to hear the music of creation in order to tune it correctly.'

'That's your speciality?' Selen asked. Yngwie inclined his head slightly, his silky fine hair falling around his shoulders. 'The boy shows some promise,' he replied, the words sounding is though they were being dragged out of him. 'I admit to being impressed by this one - the technology used to create him was obviously nibelung - I assume the rebel faction?'

Rei rolled his eyes. 'Standing right here…' He shrugged. 'That was dad's and Harlock's guess. There wasn't anyone left to ask, but they weren't the good guys, shall we say?'

'You were created to handle dark matter and zero point energy,' Yngwie told him. 'No human civilisation has advanced that far unaided - not even the Bolar Empire, and they came close before Gamilas destroyed them.'

'Kicked 'em right into touch,' Mamoru grinned gleefully. 'I think that major moving violation of theirs is still a shipping hazard… Across at least a couple of light years. Gotta love those blue guys…' He nudged Selen in the ribs. 'Doesn't Ben's dad have a bit of a thing for you?'

She rolled her eyes and sighed. 'He's expressed an interest in adding me to his harem,' she replied dryly. 'I thanked him for the offer but told him I didn't like sharing.'

Rei snorted. 'You might want to rethink that, mom. He might just take you up on it one day…' Noticing Yngwie staring at him he narrowed his eyes. 'What now?'

'I find you fascinating. We toyed with artificial lifeforms, but that resulted in the disaster that was the metanoid race. We used the formless shadows to give _our _automata intelligence, and they turned on us. The human solution is not one we considered - allowing a brain to develop naturally.'

'Not all of us do,' Rei said shortly, scowling slightly - though now, not at Yngwie. 'It's cheaper and faster to use brain imprints, and that's what most factory produced sexaroids are given. It helps, since most of them are produced as adults. I was a prototype.'

'The same technology lies beneath the cloning techniques used to produce the bodies in storage Captain Khalsa - Nero - is so keen to save,' Yngwie replied with a moue of distaste flirting with his tiny, pale blue lips. 'On the human brain its success is limited. Even if we can keep the power on until the raiding party returns, he needs to understand that he could still lose a lot of these clones - attempts to integrate the older bodies with more detailed memory implants have been a little mixed.'

'I did wonder,' Selen murmured. 'On Lar Metal cloning was used almost exclusively for reproduction. Memory downloads capable of transferring personalities intact tended to induce violent, paranoid psychoses. It seems Doppler hasn't found a solution to that problem.'

'Explains a lot about Doppler and his high command though,' Rei added in a muttered undertone. He tipped his head to one side. 'Hey - I think we've stopped…'

Mamoru strolled over to the portal and peered out. 'They said they'd have to anchor offshore - something to do with the wind. It must be too sheltered inside the shield wall. We'll be taking the launches to that main transport tug - there's an access tube running down to the transport, and the others are slaved into that one. They should have the linkages completed by the time we get there - that was the plan, anyway.'

'How did they alert them? Carrier pigeon?' Rei snorted. He leaned over the nibelung device, peering into its peculiar workings.

'Standard wireless transmitters work once out from under the EM shield,' Yngwie informed them. 'Since it takes several days to reach the islands, they've had more than enough time to complete the cabling.' His fluting voice sounded smug.

'And just how did they ship enough cabling in to link all those ships together?' Rei asked.

Yngwie's tiny mouth twitched in an all too human smirk. 'From orbit, of course - we have several ships guarding the planet. The captain just had them print up and ship down the supplies.'

Rei pulled a face. 'So we could have just hitched a ride up and come back down on the cargo shuttle? Instead of taking almost a week to get here via a mode of travel that's almost as old as humanity?'

Mamoru coughed. 'Well you did say you needed time to work on the engine… and I thought it'd be sorta neat… I mean, dad's going to be gone for at least another four days, and the raiding party about a week…'

'"Sorta neat?"'

If Mamoru heard the dangerous note creeping into Rei's voice, he carried on staring out of the open window in blissful oblivion. 'Hell yes - when do we get opportunities like this back home? It's awesome!'

Rei turned a pleading glance on his adopted mother. 'Please - can I kill him just a little bit? Harlock might even thank me… Hell, I _know _Wataru will…' He smirked when Mamoru thumped him on the arm. 'You still hit like a girl…'

'I'm being nice. Your moms are watching.'

The motherball pulsed green as though it was laughing, and Selen couldn't resist the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. At this age, with their lives ahead of them, they were cocky, spirited and despite both having had rocky starts (Rei) or trauma (Mamoru) - they still found joy in the present and the future. Out loud she simply told them to take the drive to the launch. Once they'd left she turned her attention to Yngwie, busy packing his fittings into a bundle for carrying.

'Keeping watch over me?' he asked, his musical voice approaching a sarcastic drawl as closely as it could. 'Do any of you think I'm deaf and blind?' his third eyelids flickered over his large, round eyes. 'Okita and Harlock are both unsure if I can be trusted, and you appear to be firmly on their side. Which is amusing, since I've done far less damage in my life than Mimay has, and yet…'

'You're abrasive, defensive and you hold some opinions that the rest of them find unpalatable, if not outright distasteful,' she told him bluntly. His already round eyes widened. 'Some of your attitude reminds them uncomfortably of the rebel faction we've fallen foul of over the years, so you might just want to bear in mind that they've only had a few members of your race as examples, and most of them have proved treacherous.'

'Honesty…' he murmured. 'Uncomfortable, but thank you. It's preferable to the sideways looks and sly mutterings.' He sighed. 'The girl… I never expected to see one outside of its housing. They…'

'You were ashamed,' she told him. 'Not of your reaction to _her_, but you were face to face with a cold, hard truth you'd rather not have dealt with. That creatures you'd thought of as simply necessary, faceless automata had lives, and feelings, were no different from you. That kind of shame can make or break a person. Which are you, Yngwie?'

He stared at her, his small mouth twitching slightly. 'That has the ring of experience,' he replied. 'I've heard about your world - a genetically enhanced elite, ruling from their ivory towers above the stink and noise of the workers who kept their machinery running. I've also heard of you… the queen-in-waiting who led a slave rebellion against her own mother - and ended up putting an even worse tyrant in her place.'

'Honesty…' she murmured, not hiding her flinch. 'Uncomfortable.'

Surprisingly, he smiled at her echoing of his earlier statement. 'Our races are sadly not so different, Ra Andromeda Selenium. But then, it seems our rebels have much to answer for in the development of your planet's culture. In answer to your question, I do not know. But the child - Freya? Is charming, and sharp-witted, as well as gifted - her work on the power module was exemplary. I will try not to let old prejudices colour my thinking. I am not one of the rebels. I have no desire to bask in old glories of times lost in myth and legend. These metanoids are nothing I want any part of.' He fumbled with the clasp on the box he'd filled. 'As for Mimay… on that score, I cannot be so sanguine. She acted alone, setting off that reaction which destroyed Earth and left all of us cursed. Her attachment to Harlock and Tochiro over-rode any attempt to talk sense into her. If anyone expects me to forgive her any time soon, they have a long wait ahead of them.' He looked up directly into her eyes. 'I liked Earth. It was beauty, in a mostly barren galaxy. The sheer volume and variety of life it held, even so damaged by humanity before you left it was breathtaking. I was permitted to visit several times - Okita can verify this - to wander your seashores, your mountains, deserts, forests… Our world had lost those long ago. Our forests were silent, poisonous….' He sighed. 'You had a jewel beyond price…' he shook his head sadly, the movement causing his long hair to flutter. 'Under the Mazone it will recover, but like our world, it will never be the same, and I weep for that.'

Selen regarded him with a little more warmth than she'd originally felt for the prickly alien. 'You sound more like a poet than an engineer…'

'I _wasn't _an engineer,' he blurted, fiddling with the contents of the box, having given up on the clasp. 'When Deathshadow Three was damaged, Gullveig had to take Maer's place, as she was too badly injured. I was a medic - in my last year of training when we were forced to leave Niflheim - they needed someone to keep the machines running smoothly, so I volunteered - I wanted to see Earth... I never expected…'

'To end up spending a hundred years maintaining a machine you barely understood?'

He flushed a darker sea-green. 'I can operate these machines; it's a larger version of the one your son is working on, and we used them to power our homes, but…'

'You've been flying by the seat of your pants and didn't want anyone to know it?' she finished for him. She smiled sympathetically. 'You're rather younger than Freya, in real terms, aren't you?' she asked gently.

His gaze dropped miserably to the table top. 'Ra An…'

'Selen,' she interjected firmly but kindly. 'Just Selen, Yngwie. No-one uses that name unless they're trying to make a point.' She took the few steps towards him necessary to reach him, then reached over and closed the box with deft fingers. 'Honesty,' she added, with a smile. 'Make use of it a little more. Pride and shame are toxic, and you might have just wasted an entire century alone and isolated when you could have made peace with your circumstances and found friends amongst those exiled with you. When Nero and Yanez get back, try opening up a little more. Humans can often surprise you. Even Mimay has found that to be true.'

'I… need to get these to the launch.' He almost scuttled out of the room, but he did, she noticed with a smile she hid, stop in the doorway to dip his head in acknowledgement. A couple of seconds later, Mamoru's tousled head popped around the door frame.

'He's still a bit of a prick, but kinda helps to know it's just because he's an _adolescent_ prick, right?' He grinned.

'You could try being a little nicer,' she chided, walking towards the door. 'Is that launch ready?'

'Just waiting for your illustrious presence, auntie,' he replied jauntily, falling into step with her, hands thrust into his pockets. 'Do you think the others are okay?' he asked as they crossed the wooden deck to where the rope ladder down to the launch awaited. 'Dad, Gramps, Blaze…?'

'The last message came from Hannibal this morning, relayed from the _Celeste _in orbit. They should be already engaging the ground forces on that factory world. I gather they met with a little more resistance than they expected.'

'Nothing from dad or Nero?'

'Not since they went silent prior to engaging. But you know how the weapons affect space-time in the region of a battle. The first thing affected is the warp radio. I know it's hard, but try not to worry. They've all been doing this for a long time, and Harlock's a canny tactician.' She let him go first and accepted his hand to help her into the rowboat, which wobbled rather alarmingly as she set foot in it. About twenty feet long, the little dinghy held ten people, six of whom were expected to row the few hundred yards to the floating platform moored directly above the main transport. On the middle bench, Rei sat hunched rather nervously with the generator on his lap. Selen took the spot beside him, and placed a reassuring arm around his shoulders. Mamoru, taking the bench just behind them.

'Cheer up,' he stage whispered into his friend's ear. 'It's not that deep here…'

'Oh, you're such a big help,' Rei grumped back at him. He launched into a hissed and hushed tirade of Mamoru's faults and hang-ups whilst the younger boy gave back as good as he got, the insults getting creative to the point the rest of the crew were trying hard not to laugh as they rowed. They'd reached the mooring and Halia had already sprung out of the boat to tie off by the time he realised that he'd been neatly distracted.

'Nicely done,' Selen murmured as Mamoru helped her out of the boat, Rei having practically teleported ahead of them to the comparative security of the access platform.

'Just playing to my strengths,' he beamed at her. At Halia's sigh he grinned at the girl. 'What?'

'Nothing…' As she turned back to help one of her sisters - Galena, Selen thought, though she'd yet to get them straight - she could have sworn the girl murmured "boys…" under her breath.

David was already working on the pressurised hatch that led to the small submersible they'd be taking down to the transport. Once the lights came on in the corridor that slanted downwards, he gestured expansively. 'Your chariot awaits, people - but just the minimum. Rei, Yngwie, Me, Galena. Oh, and Lady Selen.'

'Why you not me?' Mamoru asked sulkily.

'Because apparently she's familiar with this model of transport,' Halia informed him, bringing her hands down hard on his shoulders from behind, and ruffling his hair when he complained. 'You're staying here with me to liaise with Rei and Yngwie in case anything goes wrong - someone needs to monitor the other ships whilst the sub crew checks the connections. I'll be on life support, you're on power. Once the system's stable, we'll transfer command to the _Celeste_.'

He raked her with his eye from head to toe, taking in the slim, but nicely rounded in the right places body revealed by the tankini top and sarong she wore. 'Well, at least the scenery's nice…'

David's hand clipped him gently around the back of the head. 'Eyes up, small fry - you're too young for the amount of pain her fathers could unload on your head.'

'Age won't save you if I tell them you're bonking Gallie,' Mamoru smirked, just as David was ducking into the hatchway. The tall blond man jerked slightly, and swore eloquently when his head slammed into the top of the entry. With Rei and Yngwie crowding him however he was unable to manage more than turn a quick glare over one shoulder that promised later retribution before he had to vanish from view, leaving Mamoru leaning back against the railing, sniggering.

'That was nasty,' Halia told him. He glanced across to see her eyes sparkling with amusement.

'Wasn't it just?'

She laughed, then pointed to the other hatchway on the far side of the platform, this one barring the entry to a small cabin. 'You're trouble, aren't you? But cute with it. But for now, we've work to do - the sooner we're done here and back home, the happier I'll feel. Shall we?'

Grinning from ear to ear, he followed her, surreptitiously admiring the sway of her hips inside the spray-dampened cling of the bright yellow fabric of her sarong.


	22. Chapter 21

_Arcadia_

The young man on the holo screen was in his late twenties but if I hadn't known that I'd have thought he looked about seventeen, a chirpy, wide grin dominating a pleasant face underneath a shock of light brown hair poking out of a slightly mangy fur cap. A furry tail swished occasionally against his shoulder as he spoke, a tiny pointed, grey-furred, bewhiskered face sometimes popping out from under the cover of his hair to make it clear she wasn't a part of his headgear.

'...ly problem was we don't exactly have much in the way of weapons on the _Queen Emeraldas_ yet. Took a bit of damage ducking and diving, dodging and weaving but although they got a few hits in, I think it was more by luck than judgement. The old girl's made of some rare alloy that makes it hard to get a lock-on, plus most of her bulk is her engine up in the blimp, most of which is for show - actually targeting anything vital isn't as easy as it looks.' He laughed nervously, his hand tugging at the fur hat as though intending to pull it off his head and start wringing it in his hands. On his shoulder Lunna chittered into his ear and he absently released the hat and tickled the squirrel-like critter fondly. 'Em's not exactly happy with either of us though - the commander collared us just as we were liberating that oscillator, and gave her an earful.'

I couldn't resist a snort 'I'm guessing she gave back far worse than she got?'

Nazca's grin got even wider. 'You know those two. Poor bastard - he always looks a bit shell shocked once she's scratched the itch and kicked him back onto his own ship. If he wasn't just a stuck-up arse most of the time, I'd almost feel sorry for him.'

I didn't bother to try and hold back a snort at that one. One thing I've _never _felt for former Supreme Commander Ra Frankenbach Leopard is pity. 'You'd think he'd know the risks involved with tangling with either of the twins.' I tried to assay a fatherly frown at the lad. 'On which note, Nazca…'

He waved off my concern airily. 'Oh, jeez, stop fretting like a mother hen, Harlock. I'm a big boy now. Maetel and I are just friends.'

Kei's turn to snort at _that _bouncer. And in his case it wasn't May I was worried about - Promethium Had Plans for her daughter, and they didn't include an itinerant, cocky young engineer with a dubious past. Like her sister, Maetel had a nasty habit of managing to get people around her killed, but whilst Emeraldas' solution was to just hang out with someone she could tolerate but who a) could take care of himself and b) knew what he was getting into and didn't object _too _much to being used for an intergalactic booty call and occasional punch bag, May didn't seem inclined to stop recruiting the young, headstrong and overly heroic young men who tended to flock around her like moths to a flame… with about the same life expectancy.

'...nyway, you got your big boom. It collapsed in on itself with mathematical precision, and even if I do say so myself, it was a thing of beauty. The gravity wave collapsed right on target, and that ship isn't going anywhere anytime soon.'

_That's ma boy_… Tochiro murmured appreciatively in my head.

'I'm more concerned that it _isn't _destroyed,' I pointed out.

Nazca sighed. 'Yeah… but there's nothing _we _can do about it. Em's fizzing about not being able to wipe it out as well, but until I get those weapon systems online, we're little more than a glorified luxury yacht…'

'It _was _a glorified luxury yacht,' I felt the need to point out. 'And one designed by someone with way too much time on their hands for reading old tales of derring-do.'

He grinned again. 'Yeah… but it's kinda cool, you gotta admit?' He sniggered. 'And you have no need to talk, piloting that weird-ass hybrid!'

I patted the ship's wheel gently. 'Ignore him,' I said in a stage whisper, designed to carry. 'He's just being obnoxious.'

'Keep telling yourself that, Harlock. Hey - wanna speak to Meg?'

I managed not to twitch. Emeraldas' first officer had once been my ward, and although I liked the woman, she had a tendency to be a little... _strident_. 'Er… no, thanks. We'll catch up later. Is Emeraldas still planning to head to Ventimiglia?' and wouldn't _that _be fun…

'Thought we might as well - Leopard's taking a small group out there to meet up. I guess he thinks this bunch might be a good addition to his rebels?'

'He can argue that out with Selen and Hannibal,' I told him. 'And Nero's no pushover, but feel free not to give him a heads-up on that titbit. I love to watch him squirm.'

'Could be fun to watch couldn't it? Gotta go - seeya!'

He cut the connection from his end before I could reply, and I leaned against the wheel heavily, with a heartfelt sigh. Kei leaned over and patted my arm. 'They grow up so fast…' she said brightly, a chuckle escaping her as I glared at her.

Next to my other side, Yattaran shuddered theatrically. 'I'm still trying to unsee the image of Frankie-boy having actual _sex_…' When Kei's spit-take with her tea almost took out her console he scowled at her. 'Wha?'

'Seriously? _We're_ all trying to forget about _you _and Anita… What the hell she sees in you I have no idea.'

He preened, drawing himself up to his full height and tried to suck his stomach in, without much luck. 'Some women like to have something to hold onto in the clinches.'

'...but without being smothered,' Kei muttered, loud enough to carry. Someone on the main floor sniggered and turned it into a cough.

'Besides - I built that kitchen for her.'

'Eighteen years ago,' I felt the need to add, earning a glare from my first mate. 'Are you _still _trading on past glories?'

'I'll have you know I keep that area in tip-top condition,' he informed me sniffily. 'Ain't no ship in the entire Thieves' fleet has a kitchen as good as ours. Or a cook, as witnessed by Blaze and Hannibal tryin' to steal her out from under us every chance they get. You guys _owe _me…'

'He has a point,' I told Kei, who just folded her arms and tapped her foot. 'Don't give me that, a happy cook is a happy crew, and around here I need all the help I can get some days. Best recruit I ever made…'

'_You_ made?' Kei and Yattaran both echoed in unison. They glared at each other around my back, as ever hating to be in agreement. Even now they both liked to take credit for talking Anita into joining us, conveniently forgetting that she'd made the first move herself.

'I'm the captain, so frankly, yes. No-one comes aboard without my say so.'

'_Now_, yes,' Kei couldn't resist adding. Somewhere behind the captain's throne, Mimay let out a delicate snigger, and a chorus of coughing broke out on the main floor.

'Ya kinda were a bit wet back then,' Yattaran added.

The lower bridge now sounded like a terminal consumptive ward.

'Speaking of a bit wet, the pair of you do know we now have friends with a nice big sailing ship? Keelhauling isn't out of the question.'

Kei leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. 'How many times do I have to remind you? Never make threats you won't follow through on,' she whispered near my ear, her hair brushing against skin that was a little too sensitive when paired with the delicate scent of her.

'Try me,' I muttered back, but without any real conviction. She laughed and returned to her post, with such a deliberately provocative sway of her arse - encased as it was in form-fitting red leather, the tops of her long legs an equally enticing entrée as they disappeared into the long black boots she habitually wore - that I made a mental note to give no mercy and no quarter once we were alone later. And that I _would _make good on, the teasing minx. I dragged my attention back to the matter in hand and thanked the powers that be for state-of-the-art compression flightsuits. 'I don't care if that Phantasma is crippled, I want it gone. Get Nero on the comms for me.'

I tried not to growl at Kei's barely audible appreciative sigh when our new ally appeared in a life size holo in front of us, displaying an impressive expanse of carpet between the lacings of a black silk shirt that stretched across muscled shoulders. Under the weight of the gravity cloak I tried to make my instinctive attempt to straighten up and look bigger imperceptible. I folded my arms. 'Nero.' I nodded to acknowledge him.

'Harlock. We've made a sweep from the outer range of the time radar - as far as we can tell we succeeded - there's no way, given the amount of distortion, that those ships survived.'

'We weren't so lucky with the third,' I told him. 'Nazca says they crippled it, but at least negated the threat from that black hole. What worries me is that it might be capable of limping along to a safe harbour, and I'm not a fan of letting an enemy getting a foothold behind me.'

'Neither am I. Yanez?' he turned to off-camera, and held a quick conference with his second whilst I waited. 'There's a small system within reach of that singularity, if they have a functional drive. Even limping in IN-SKIP it'll take them no more than a day. It's a dwarf star with a small planetesimal orbiting in the sweet spot. The Empire has been using it as a body dump for several years - nicely out of the way so no-one comes across it by accident. They like to maintain that illusion that the poor bastards who give up their bodies can one day have them back…'

'Score one for the Evil Cybernetic Empire Marketing Department,' I replied dryly. 'That system's not on our charts…'

'Well after you and Selen basically started the Machinners' War by making those body dumps public, I gather they've gone to great lengths to make sure this stuff doesn't get out these days.'

'Never heard of burning the evidence?' Yattaran asked waspishly.

Nero's shoulders twitched. 'Because that makes it _so_ much better?'

'Because they're still being manipulated by outside agencies,' I added, 'and those agencies have a vested interest in making sure there's a large supply of _usable_ dead bodies.'

Nero inclined his head slightly. 'Just so.'

'You want to take out the trash?' I gave him my best let's-ruin someone's day smirk.

He grinned wolfishly in return, white teeth flashing. 'Sounds like my kind of plan. I think the grown-ups can handle things at their respective ends for a few days, don't you?'

I laughed. 'Well, it would be remiss of us to not clean up after ourselves, wouldn't it? Rendezvous with us about 2AU away from that system, on the far side of that dwarf. That should keep us out of direct line of a scan. We can make a short hop once we've located the Phantasma, catch them with their pants down with any luck.'

'We'll probably get there before them,' Yattaran pointed out. Nero shrugged.

'Good. Time to prepare a nice welcome if we do. Do you have some of that monofilament in store?'

I glanced at Yattaran, who was nodding eagerly, a ferocious, anticipatory and disturbingly predatory smile on his face. 'I think that's a "hell yes",' I told my counterpart.

'Would be remiss of us not to also leave…'

'...some nasty deterrents for anyone using that planet as a mass grave?' I finished for him. We traded smirks, and I cut the connection. Kei leaned on her console with a sigh. 'I'd hoped to head back to that nice, relaxing, tropical paradise…'

'With all those lovely, almost-nekkid cuties...' Franz called up.

'I think you meant to say "technical jailbait", you aging pervs,' Kei called down. 'You lot can just behave. And when we do get back, if persons of your preferred gender coming onto you can't provide you with proof of actual age over apparent age, and you don't make your apologies, you'll be making an appointment with Luna and her trusty spoon "rusty"... '

Nervous laughter. Not even the old timers were sure if she was joking on this score.

'Bit harsh,' Yattaran muttered. Kei gave him the stink eye, and he decided to examine his console in minute detail until she looked away.

'You really should know better,' I told him. 'Just get us underway.'

'Aye aye. Course laid in, Captain.'

I placed my hands on the wheel, already feeling the vibration as Mimay, without needing further orders, began to spin up the massive rotating arch of the dark matter drive behind us, as Kei gave the order to prepare for IN-SKIP.

'Arcadia - blast off!'

The words were no sooner out of my mouth than the ship sprang forward into the cloud of dark matter pooling around the bow of the ship, red lightning flickering around the viewing window as we left real space-time behind.

* * *

According to the scanners, the Phantasma had crash-landed on the tiny continent that lay over the equator of the small, icy world below. Underneath the thin ribbons of dark matter the ship was much smaller than I'd expected - but still easily more than double our draught. It stuck out of the glacier it was half-buried in, listing to one side, a roughly ovoid obsidian slab still gently pulsing with dark matter, rather like a heartbeat.

'I'm detecting movement down there,' Kei told me, without looking up from her screen. 'But no life signs. Plenty of biomass in that area though.'

'Can you get the drone any lower?' Nero, standing next to where I lounged in the captain's chair, leaned forward to take a closer look at the image.'

'We're at the safe limit for being spotted,' she told him. 'And the limit for magnification. I'd rather not alert them to our presence just yet.'

_I can try and enhance the image. Give me a mo._

True to his word, Tochiro enlarged the image, centreing on the small figures moving around on the ice. _If I extrapolate from what we can see with what we know_…

The image resolved into armored figures alongside spindly machines hauling bodies out of the snow and ice. Some were being immediately discarded, thrown to one side like so much rubbish. Others were being stacked like cordwood on a sled-like object. I say "like" in the loosest sense - it looked more like a gigantic inky black flatworm balanced on rippling tentacles. 'Please tell me that's an artist's impression,' I said faintly. It stretched the length of the distance from ship to the working area - a good two hundred metres.

And the bodies discarded weren't being thrown away - they were being thrown into its path, vanishing into some hidden maw.

'It's just sitting there. Now would be a good time to attack,' Nero said quietly. He'd popped over via shuttle - more to get a good look around the ship I suspected than any real operational necessity.

'Do you carry any orbital bombardment munitions?' I asked. 'Because I don't. We don't get into that kind of fight.'

'Just blast them from orbit.' He shrugged. 'There's nothing else down there.'

''Except the dead,' I pointed out. 'The kind of firepower we can bring to bear would crack this entire planet. Apart from the shipping hazard we'd create through this zone, I don't like desecrating the resting places of the dead.'

'They're _dead_…' He emphasised the word wearily as though he felt he shouldn't have to spell it out to me. 'They're beyond caring.'

'No-one cared when they were alive,' I said softly. 'Do we really need to compound the injustice and indignity?' I sighed. He was right, and I wasn't going to press the point. Didn't mean I had to like it. However: 'But this might be a good opportunity to get a look at them up close and personal,' I added. 'See what it takes to confront them outside their ships. We've beefed up the cosmo guns and hand axes - are your guys up to a field trip before we blast the living daylights out of that thing?'

We'd lose the element of surprise,' Nero pointed out. 'They could lift off and…'

'...be lumbering out of the gravity well about as fast as we do. And when they do, they'll run headfirst into the monofilament mines we've spent two days laying. I'd rather take her in vacuum anyway - for the original reason - slagging this rock, no matter how out of the way it is, will not win us any friends back home. It's off the beaten path, but unexpected shipping hazards between here and Andromeda tend to piss Layla Shura off.'

'Said with the voice of experience?' Nero asked with a knowing smile.

'I don't like taking the fall for blowing up planets,' I pointed out a little sniffily. 'That kind of reputation tends to stick…' It was a low blow, but I was feeling a little mean. I was still smarting over losing so many crewmen to these things, and wasn't feeling that friendly towards the reason I was standing here at the moment.

Kei perched on the very end of her console, hands curled lightly around the edge. 'We could use a bit of action that takes us off the ship for a bit. If they are going to make use of the all-you-can-possess zombie buffet, taking them out away from their ship makes sense - and we get a chance to see just what we're up against.'

'Can't we just let the other guys do that and watch the action replay?' Franz asked plaintively.

'You learn by doing,' I quipped.

More nervous laughter, but I could already hear a couple of them discussing decapitation versus disemboweling as ways of taking down the undead. Martinez suggested taking out the legs, and a huddle next to what was usually Ali's station was embroiled in a rapidly raucous comparison of whether axes or cosmo guns would be better.

I left them to it, and accompanied Nero back to his shuttle.

'Rather… _robust _bunch, aren't they?' he asked companiably as we strolled. I'd been expecting a snarky comment about our lack of automated walkways given the fact it was almost a kilometre from the bridge to the main bow hangar, given the internal layout, so his non sequitur took me a little by surprise.

'Good men - and women - to have at your side in a fight,' I replied. 'A trifle rambunctious on occasion, but every single one of them will fight to the last drop of their blood.'

'_Axes_?' he emphasised the word with a grin. 'Takes me right back to the old days… Me, Kavanagh… Harlock… before someone - namely Okita - got the bright idea of promoting me.'

'Hannibal mentioned Kavanagh a couple of times - one of Harlock's old crew?'

'Security. He'd have fit right in on this ship. A real ginger bruiser, over a class A counter-insurgency specialist.'

'What happened to him?' Nero's tone had been a little bleak - I suspected he hadn't survived the war.

'Doppler. Or rather, one of his henchmen. A nasty piece of work called Victor Harken. We'd been taken prisoner after a nasty engagement off Tiamat. Just a handful of survivors from both sides, and only a dozen from the _Yukikaze_. The Captain was being a bit pissy about following orders, so Harken had Kav shot as an example.' He rubbed the back of his neck as we walked, fingers twitching as though wanting to scratch an old itch. 'If it hadn't been for Maya's brothers and Mamoru not giving up on Harlock, we'd have all died there. There have been days I believed that would have been a good thing… If I'd known what was coming...'

'You don't carry Harlock's guilt,' I said quietly as we walked. 'Was it all so bad, in the years that followed?'

He let out a short, sharp laugh. 'Cut right through the crap don't you? No. It was hard, afterwards. For a long time. But the last fifty years or so I've found a certain kind of peace I had never expected. A friend closer than a brother in Yanez. My daughters… the people who rely on me. Even, if I'm honest, a new purpose since Promethium crossed my path. There is after all a certain satisfaction in slapping down a smug, arrogant tyrant. Doppler's operation has pulled in its reach over the years… harrying that bald, pointy-eared bastard and his hunchbacked hench-thing was getting more and more difficult for little reward.'

I smiled. 'So… you're another man who's really a pirate underneath the thin veneer of civilisation?'

He laughed, more humorously this time. 'The Captain did seem to have a knack for attracting like-minded individuals. Even you, I gather…'

Inwardly, I winced. My history with Harlock hadn't been quite that promising at the time. 'Actually, I came aboard as a spy and assassin for the Gaia Sanction. I've never been able to drag out of him why the hell he didn't just have me shot on sight, since he knew from the start who and what I was…' I wanted that sentence back the moment I'd uttered it. Thankfully he seemed not to have noticed the slip in my verb tenses… I wasn't sure I was ready to explain Harlock's on-again-off-again existence issues to this old comrade of his. For one thing I wasn't quite sure yet what his response would be, and I had no idea what a well-placed cosmogun blast would do to the third member of the Arcadia's triad of genii loci…

'He was a better judge of men than even he gave himself credit for,' Nero said softly. 'Almost as good as his brother. Of course, that's on an individual level… people en masse… not so much. But whilst I can buy you as a spy… somehow, assassin isn't what I think of when I look at you. There's a certain lack of empathy needed to be willing to kill a man in cold blood, or shoot him in the back. And empathy is not something you seem to be lacking.'

I forebore to ask what he thought might be lacking. 'My older brother cornered the market in sociopathic ambition.' My brother… and the synthetic currently hosting his downloaded memories, which I'd been about to close in on when this situation blew up in my face. We reached the hangar. 'I think this is your stop,' I quipped. I offered my hand and managed to just about hold my own in the macho grip-testing that briefly followed. 'Kei will send over the rendezvous co-ordinates for a quick ground assault, if you still want to join us?'

'Wouldn't miss it,' he told me warmly.

Just as the door was about to iris closed behind him her looked back over his shoulder. 'And maybe afterwards we can share a drink, and you can tell me what exactly my old captain is getting up to.'

The hangar door shut with a soft hiss, cutting off what would have been at best a feeble attempt to deny everything.


	23. Chapter 22

_Thunderbolt_

'If you want my advice, you'll let our piratical botanist do his own research into the effect of those upgrades to the weapons,' Yanez advised sourly as he leaned against the doorway to the armory, watching his captain suit up. As his armour had proved less than effective in a prior engagement, this meant the all-weather flightsuits and a breather unit built into the high collar, which also housed a force-shield, all in unadorned black, and topped off with his totally non regulation gravity cloak, the latter slung from his left shoulder to leave his right arm clear.

Nero thrust his gravity sabre into its holster with a grunt, and reached for his Cosmolocks.

'You're a walking invitation for a bullet in that,' Yanez continued.

'You say that every time. The fabric's energy disruptive and the gravity field…'

'...has a nasty tendency to redirect anything aimed at you towards the closest poor bastard. Leave it to an officer to swan around in something designed to put the poor enlisted buggers surrounding them at risk. There's a reason the Fleet discontinued those stupid things after the war,' Yanez groused. Nero just smiled at him.

'My brother - you worry too much. And exaggerate. The graviton field absorbs most of the energy directed at it - EM, heat and kinetic. Tochiro improved considerably upon the original specs for just that reason.' He grinned toothily. 'Although there was that time Harlock and I got stuck bouncing one bolt back between us more times than we thought possible. Pinned down a few feet from each other at just the wrong reflective angle…'

'Yes. Well just make sure if _this _Harlock is wearing the same getup, you keep your angles of reflection clear of each other.' Yanez looked around the room and sighed. 'Where's your backup? Since you're making me stay behind to hold the fort…'

'Already en route to the shuttle,' Nero replied smoothly. 'I'm taking Cren, Yara, José and Erik. That's more than enough trouble.'

'I'm amazed you talked Cren into this folly,' Yanez grumbled. 'He's always complaining about his tail getting cold when we go off planet…'

'When they left, Yara was giving him some suggestions as to where he could stuff it,' Nero replied with a hearty laugh. 'Though she went very quiet at his counter suggestion…'

'I'm amazed there weren't knives involved,' Yanez replied dryly. 'That young woman has a long history of expressing her opinions with sharp objects. We should have introduced her to Kei - I think the two of them would hit it off. You would not believe the number of weapons that woman keeps secreted around her person.'

'Having read the Gaia Sanction file on her, actually, I think I would. Now - are you going to loiter there all day, or accompany me to the shuttle?'

Yanez levered himself away from the wall and fell in beside his much longer legged companion. 'Just a quick sortie,' he warned Nero as they walked. 'No heroics _this _time - I'll be in orbit.'

'You don't trust anyone else to guard my back, do you?' Nero asked, amusement in his tone.

Yanez was not so cavalier. 'No. And if the words "what could possibly go wrong?" exit your mouth, I'm hogtying you and throwing you in the nearest cell in the brig until we've taken out that ship.'

'Remind me again which of us had his cover blown, was drugged, imprisoned and interrogated and had to be rescued from a noose as it tightened around his throat?'

'It was a firing squad. And as I recall, that happened because I went in to rescue _you_…'

'I'd already escaped. It's not as if that planetary governor's men were _that _good…'

'And if you'd thought to send a message, instead of lingering to seduce his daughter…'

'Niece.'

'Who cares!' Yanez threw up his hands, gesticulating wildly. 'Most of the times I've almost lost vital body parts, I've done so saving your unworthy arse.' The travelator came to a stop outside the hangar doors. 'Watch your back,' he added with considerable feeling, as his captain strode through the doorway.

'Relax, Yanez. What could possibly go wrong?'

The doors slid closed before Yanez could reply, and he was left staring at the dark grey metal with a mix of frustration and exasperation on his weatherbeaten face.

* * *

_Arcadia_

'You should be wearing your armour.' Kei leaned against the wall of the armoury, arms folded across her breasts, and a worried wrinkle seemingly parked for the duration just between her eyes above her nose.

'According to all the data Nero supplied, the metanoids have managed to render it worse than useless. They have had millennia to come up with a way of negating its original advantages, after all,' I pointed out as I struggled with a boot. I kept my attention divided between the seals on my suit and Kei, since the alternative was a couple of bare-arsed crewmen currently squabbling over the ownership of the thermal underwear one of Luna's cats had sent flying from the bench about a minute earlier. 'Really guys? You're both a medium and practically the same height - just cover yourselves up and get dressed,' I snapped at Martinez and Franz, who shut up and took a set each - looked at them - swapped them again and set to muttering.

'Haven't you got anything better to do that loiter staring at naked men?' Franz asked plaintively of Kei. She laughed at them.

'Really? Because these days, after raising three small boys, I just get the urge to slap a nappy over the whole kit and kaboodle.' Ignoring the spluttering indignation she strolled over to give me a hand with the gravity cloak attachments to my flightsuit. After years of procrastination, I'd finally been persuaded to let Maji make a demi-cuirass in my size similar to the one my predecessor had worn, and I was still getting used to the metal plates over my back and shoulders. They were well articulated, but a little uncomfortable. I had however - to Kei's disappointment - drawn the line at thigh high boots and the upper arm bracers.

Cloak in place - and yes, the cuirass did distribute the weight of the damned thing a lot more evenly, and I didn't feel _quite _so inclined to topple over underneath several yards of artificial leather and embedded high end electronics - I reached for the gun belts. Cosmo dragoon first, the belt for the sabre rifle crossing with it, one skull and crossbones buckle settling under the first. I strapped the pistol's holster into place, and Kei knelt down to fasten the ties on the sabre's holster. 'You don't have to do that,' I said softly, smiling down at her.

She looked up at me, smiling slightly. 'I know. But…' I took her hand to help her back to her feet, taking the opportunity for a quick, reassuring hug. She worries, and tends to express this by fussing over what I'm wearing.

'Don't _we _get a hug?' Martinez asked with a wink. In reply she just rolled her eyes, and he pushed his bottom lip out. 'Awww… and we're going to be in as much danger as he is…' he pointed out.

'More,' Franz offered, pulling a jumper on over his head, his voice muffled by the fabric as he waggled his arms down to the cuffs. 'He's wearing that bloody cloak. Again.'

'Your last captain wore it all the time,' I pointed out, not unreasonably. 'I don't recall any bitching about it then…'

'No,' Franz said slowly. 'That would be because the lazy bastard very rarely moved his arse out of his chair on the bridge. And in the six years I was on board before you arrived, I can recall him leaving the ship maybe four times. You, on the other hand, apparently aren't happy unless you're getting shot at, and by extension, getting _us _shot at. And _we _don't wear fancy high-end deflector shields in our clothing.'

'Be thankful,' I replied dryly. 'If we were all wearing them it would end up like a billiard table out there.'

I should have kept my mouth shut. Unlike some of the men, these two actually thought on their feet.

'Nero will be wearing one, won't he?' Martinez asked, in an equally dry tone. Franz paused in the act of stroking the fur on top of his lip back into place after ruffling it up pulling his sweater on. Suddenly all three of them were staring at me, arms folded across their chests. Kei's foot tapped on the floor, a tip, tip tip with her toe that added volumes to the conversation her left eyebrow was currently having with me.

'Seriously? You _know _where not to stand, and Ali only moans about _that one time_ because he's Ali. Just find a big rock if it bothers you.' I glared at the trio, but it was water off a duck's back. The newer recruits - and by that I mean anyone who came aboard less than eighteen years ago - can be intimidated with an arched eyebrow. My wife and the guys I used to bus tables for before their previous captain vanished in a wisp of dark matter and left me to clear up his mess? Not so much. In fact, after a couple of seconds, Martinez sniggered and Franz's lip began to twitch under cover of his lip ferret.

I gave up. 'I miss Ali…' I stage-whispered to Kei. She patted me on the arm. 'We do our best to make up for his absence,' she replied, mock sympathy dripping from every syllable.

'Remind me again why I'm taking those two jokers?'

'Hey!' Franz glared at me. 'Because with Cai and Val both gone, we're the best shots. Plus gammy leg or not, most of the others can't keep up with you. Of course if you'd rather take that dumb pair of walking brick walls…'

'I need Sabu and Yasu on the guns,' Kei replied tartly. 'They're ex artillery - you two aren't.' She gave me a peck on the cheek. 'Try not to get shot, stabbed or crushed. Or break anything.'

'You say that as though it's a regular occurrence.'

I got The Eyebrow.

'Not _every _time…'

Franz slapped me on the shoulder, and winced as his palm connected under the cloak with the new cuirass. 'Keep telling yourself that, captain. Kei - don't worry. Can't promise to stop him getting a scratch or two on the chassis, but we'll do our best to keep him out of trouble.'

'Please do. And if he gets killed…'

'We know,' Martinez interrupted cheerily. 'Don't come back.'

'Attaboys,' she told them, with either the world's best poker face, or with deadly intent. Sometimes with Kei, it's hard to tell. She left us then, striding away quickly back in the direction of the bridge, leaving the three of us to make our way to the lower hangar, where the shuttle awaited us.

'Why does she always sashay away like that?' Martinez was still fastening his gun belt as we walked, tugging the leather through the buckle to cinch it tight over his jacket. Where Franz and I both had fairly discrete skull and crossbone stencils in white on the left breast, his was red and covered most of the front, and sported a cutlass in its rictus grin. 'Not,' he added, after throwing an appreciative look over his shoulder, to watch her leather-clad ass saunter away, 'that it doesn't do very nice things to that amazing ass…' Franz slapped him upsides the head. 'Hey! mind the hair!' He ran his hands over a patterned buzz cut so short that nothing could have disturbed the grinning skull shaved into it.

'Behave,' his partner in crime advised. 'You never learn - how long have you known that she-devil?' He grinned. It's cute to watch though. She tries so hard to act as though she's okay with you making boneheaded plays that put you in harm's way, but hot damn, she clenches...'

"Cute" wasn't how I'd describe it. Kei had been _very _clear what she thought of making a target of myself down there. I'd had the devil's own job talking her out of coming along, and only falling back on pulling rank and pointing out that having both captain and first officer down there wasn't smart had kicked her in her overly professional pride. Which was a dirty move, but only one of us needed to be terminally heroic.

'You could send just us down,' Franz continued. 'You know we can handle it, right?' He was plugging his power-axe into the unit on his belt as he talked. The damn thing looks as though it'd take both hands to swing it, but it's surprisingly light - the killing power is in the blade, based on the same tech as my sabre. I helped him shift the shaft to his back and settle it in place, the wicked curved head sticking up above his head. 'Thanks.'

'Most times, yes' I told him. 'But I'll never ask anyone to do something I wouldn't. And these creatures are still unknown quantities. Tochiro, Maji and Yattaran need more data on their offensive and defensive capabilities. Mimay's knowledge of them is both minimal and possibly - and how often do you get to make statements like this - millions of years out of date. The new frequencies for the guns and force shields need testing.' We reached the hangar, where our bullet waited. 'If we get into serious difficulties, we've got two Deathshadow class battleships in orbit. Once Kei and Yanez make a move, I guarantee they won't be wasting time on us…'

Martinez gave the tip of my sabre a tap with his toe, metal sole clocking against the muzzle. 'You just want to buckle your swash with this new guy, don't you?' he smirked. 'Cloak. Sabre rifle… fancy new duds… hair neatly brushed… Admit it!' He'd checked out one of the massive (barely) man-portable assault rifles, complete with underslung bayonet - if a two foot long curved gravity blade can be called a bayonet. Personally I thought that was pushing it. It was the big brother to Kei's baroque monstrosities, relying on a swivel mount at the hip which he'd have to attach after we landed.

'Fancy new full EM spectrum absorption circuitry embedded in the leather,' I pointed out, ignoring the accusation. 'Which the pair of you are _also _wearing, because I'm such a _wonderful _captain…'

We clumped up the ramp and into the bullet. I took the pilot's seat with Franz in the co-pilot's chair. The cloak was in the way so I had to flick the heavy leather out behind me to sit down, and try to ignore the barely repressed sniggers. 'Terror of three galaxies,' I muttered as I sat down. 'Laughing stock on my own ship…'

Martinez took the seat behind me. 'Nah. We just know you better is all. Anyone _else _disrespects you, we flatten 'em.' He patted the massive piece of field artillery next to him. 'Alison here tends to get people's attention.'

'And we _did _take the piss out of all that endless poncy cloak-flinging,' Franz added. 'Just not anywhere the humourless bastard could hear us…'

_There are days these guys say something that makes me remember just how much he'd changed… _Tochiro said sadly inside my head_. There was a time he'd have laughed along with them. Just ask Mamoru… or Khalsa_. _Harlock was a right little shit of a prankster in his youth_. He sniggered. _Oh man… the stunts the pair of us used to pull!_

I forebore from pointing out that a little more discipline might have been more in order when my possibly insane, definitely socially inadequate ancestor had still been small enough for a little parental chastisement to have an effect. On the other hand by all accounts his father had been a disaster, swinging from total indifference to borderline abuse when his wayward, attention-seeking offspring had finally gone too far. Having fathered four examples of the breed, I could partly sympathise with the circumstances… but never with the solutions. His father should have known better - it's a demonstrated trait in all the branches of my family I've ever known. The more anyone tries to shut us down, the more stubborn we get.

And we also don't keep a rein on our tongues… 'Really?' I said out loud. 'You call it _Alison…_?'

'Ex girlfriend,' Martinez said brightly, the tone going right over his head.

I took us out of the hangar and nosed us down to the little iceball that dared to call itself a planet. 'You think you know a guy, and even after almost twenty years…' I sighed and shook my head.

'Hey - I've always named my weapons!' Martinez replied. 'What of it?'

'Well...' I added slowly, playing it for all it was worth. 'It's just...she doesn't look like an _Alison_…'

In my earpiece, Tochiro sniggered. In the viewscreen's faint reflection I could see both of them looking as though I'd just grown two heads. Franz twisted in his seat, looked down at the gun, then twisted back to send me a sideways glance. 'Okay… I'll take the bait. What _does _it look like?'

Tochiro answered for me. 'Saskia,' He said over the comms, as we dipped into the upper atmosphere. 'Definitely a Saskia…'

'I'm afraid to ask…' Martinez muttered.

'Commodore Velasky,' he said brightly. 'I was eighteen, she was forty and change, breasts like barrage balloons but the rest of her was six foot tall and built along the lines of a Titan class battleship. Could have snapped my neck with one pinky finger, and had thighs that could have squeezed the breath out of a sumo champion… Went through sub-alterns like chocolate bars.' He giggled. 'She made a play for Harlock, but… well… she wasn't his type.'

Franz choked, apparently on his own tongue, and sat back in his seat. Martinez settled for a simple "huh".

'Redhead by any chance?' I drawled.

'How did you guess?'

'Runs in the family. Taro has a major crush on Emeraldas…' My adopted son had turned out to be descended from my central computer. There are days you can't make this stuff up. Welcome to my life...

'Tall… red hair, legs up to heaven… great tits… scary dangerous…' he mused. 'Yep. He's an Oyama all right!'

'She'd eat him alive,' Franz muttered darkly. 'But what a way to go!' Martinez added. 'What?' he asked of Franz's reflected eye-rolling. 'She's hot…'

'And probably even more deadly than "Alison" there, Franz pointed out. 'Erm...captain? If we want to avoid detection you need to put down around here somewhere…'

I'd been skimming blithely through the valleys below the hard deck in a particularly mountainous region, but this was coming to an end. The flat plains ahead were snow-covered, but although an ice ball, the planet was at least blessed with a breathable atmosphere and despite its small feeble sun, did have a temperature that was just about bearable with the all-weather gear. A couple of degrees lower however and compromised or not, we'd have been in the hardsuits.

'Just tell me that's land under the ice, and not sea,' I told him. 'Or titanic beasties...I'm not forgetting Tokarga in a hurry…'

Both men laughed. Ali giving Kei the coordinates to set down our last-but-one dimensional oscillator back in the day right on top of a giant space-worm was something he'd never lived down. Franz ran a weather eye over the scanners. 'Well about two miles north it must be solid. That's where our new friends have landed. It's sheltered from the dig site by dint of being just the other side to the valley they're excavating. Bit of a walk to get there, but doable.'

The idea of a trudge through ice and snow wasn't inspiring, but neither was dropping right on top of a group of hostiles. I swung the bullet around and brought her in to drop gracefully next to an almost identical craft already parked on the permafrost.

* * *

Nero turned up the thermostat on his suit and shivered as an icy breeze tried to weasel its way down the back of his neck whilst simultaneously slapping his long black hair into his face. The downdraft was the result of the bullet craft circling above before descending to land lightly on the ground about fifty yards away, sinking slightly into the permafrost as the landing jets partially melted the tundra. 'Not my best idea,' he muttered, tugging his pistol out of its holster.

'Leaving a tropical paradise for an arctic wasteland? Who wouldn't love that?' Erik drawled sarcastically. The red-haired young man pulled the hood of his fur-lined parka up over his head. At his side, Cren's tail - encased in a fur-lined extension to his suit, lashed indignantly as its owner surveyed their surroundings.

'We seem to have gone undetected,' the chthonian said eventually. 'Still detecting movement over the ridge, but no-one heading this way.'

'Life signs?' Yara and José wandered up, checking their weapons. Yara was armed with a gravity rapier and a lighter version of Nero's antique flintlock replica, José with several force knives. It was Yara who'd spoken - a sharp faced young woman whose long brown hair was currently hidden by her hood.

'Lots of biomass, as you'd expect, but nothing living. The only reason we can detect anything is that weird-ass warping is really noticeable once you know what to look for. That robot of Harlock's is pretty damn smart…'

Yara gave him a dig in the ribs. 'He's a synth… an android, not a robot.'

'Same difference,' José muttered. He ignored her scowl. 'Captain? Looks as though Captain fancy-pants is on his way - another one,' he said with a sideways sly smile at his captain, 'who lets vanity triumph over a nice woolly hat… Oh, and he's brought company…'

Nero turned to look in the direction of the Arcadia's bullet, where three tall figures were striding towards them, the middle of them sporting a long, red-lined black gravity cloak, like Nero, his long hair blowing in the wind in defiance of the chill. He was flanked by two slim but well-built men in their mid to late thirties - one fair-skinned, sporting curling brown hair and a moustache, the other more rather more mediterranean in looks with what could be seen of his black hair under his jacket hood cropped and shaved. 'Harlock!'

Harlock lifted his hand in acknowledgement as they drew closer. 'Nero.'

'Only two?' Erik asked, eying up Harlock's two companions.

'When you've got the best, why bring more?' the mustachioed pirate replied in a sarcastic drawl. The other man bit back a snigger. Harlock introduced them simply. 'Franz, Martinez. And it would be appreciated if we could save the ball sniffing and territorial marking until we're done…'

Nero turned away to hide a smile, but not before catching Harlock's one hazel eye, brimful of amusement. 'I think I can keep my lot in order if you can?'

'Oh, they're mostly housetrained.'

'Hey!'

'Oi!'

Franz and Martinez both tried and failed to look offended, and Erik laughed. 'Good to know. So, captains - what's the plan?'

'Observe, and then start picking off the outliers, I thought,' Nero suggested, his attention on the younger captain. 'They could have just rested here to let the auto repair do its job, but they've taken the opportunity to raid the body dump. I'm interested in seeing if there are any clues as to what they want them for…'

'Or how,' Harlock added darkly. The younger man unholstered his pistol. 'It doesn't look as though it acts like a contagion, but I'd like to know for sure. How do they sequester a body? I get the why of it - the nibelung had that covered - interaction with our universe is difficult when you're made of strange matter. That's why they made them synthetic bodies back in their own universe.'

'Those would be the armoured figures we've seen?' Erik asked.

'Possibly.' Nero preferred to err on the side of caution. 'But let's not make assumptions.' He drew Harlock off to one side. 'To avoid the pissing contest as to who gets to give the orders…' he began.

'Your territory,' Harlock told him. 'We'll follow your lead - although I reserve the right to pull the plug if it all goes south.'

'Fair enough.' Nero wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed - his former captain would never have yielded authority so quickly, despite his complete and utter disdain for it. Something, from the sly look he saw briefly pass over this younger Harlock's face was something the other man was well aware of. 'You enjoy playing with people's expectations far too much,' he said. Harlock laughed softly.

'It has been said. Why don't we mix up the teams a bit? Send a couple of yours forward with Martinez, and we'll keep Franz and the other pair with us?'

'I'm not sure our people will mix that well,' Nero replied dryly.

Harlock shrugged. 'Have to find out sometime. And my guys might surprise you - they might goof around, but they've never let me down in the clinches. Yours look the part and talk the talk, but I'd still like to see what they're made of.'

'Not literally, one hopes,' Nero muttered as they walked back towards the small group. He flinched slightly to see Franz leaning in towards Yara, then unclenched his shoulders when his notoriously nervy crew woman actually smiled. 'Well, that's a start…' he murmured, not expecting the other man to pick up on it.

'Kei's just as twitchy. Trust Franz to spot it,' Harlock replied equally quietly. 'He's fine - likes a pretty girl but doesn't push. I told you - they talk a lot of shit, but they're good men.'

'We'll soon see.' Out loud he called out to the group. 'Cren? With... Martinez is it? take point. Yara, Franz - flanking myself and Harlock. José, Erik…'

'I know… I know…' the redhead grumbled good naturedly. 'Bring up the rear…'

'Teaming Yara with Franz?' Harlock asked quietly. Nero smiled enigmatically but said nothing, effecting to ignore Harlock's sideways glance. Instead he tossed over one of the scanners, before realising that he might have looked like a complete bastard for expecting the one eyed man to catch it.

Harlock caught it easily, and didn't even raise an eyebrow at the faux pas. As thick flakes of snow started to fall, he simply double checked the readings and pointed. 'Over the hill and not so far away,' he said in his quiet tenor. 'Esteban? You might want to let Alison there off the leash.'

Martinez patted the monstrosity on its swivel mount. 'She's ready and raring to go captain. By the way - I figured you were right. I'm calling her Emeraldas…'

'You're a dead man if she hears you, you know that, right?'

Martinez beamed at him. 'Emmy? Awww… she'd be flattered.'

Cren's heavy brows almost tied themselves in a knot above his flat nose. 'Really? You named your _gun _after a _woman_…?'

'Firstly, don't judge until you've met the woman, and what else would you name one after?' Martinez's face was a study in innocence.

Cren's tailed swished a couple of times and ended up looped over his left arm, but he took up his place a few feet to the left of the Arcadia's crewman and said nothing as they set off.

* * *

The metanoid ship dominated the skyline - over half a mile high and maybe four miles long it was a massive, black mountain standing out in stark contrast to the white snow which crunched underfoot. Even landing deeply into the permafrost hadn't diminished its imposing size by much, and its featureless, conical exterior emanated a chill that made the frigid air of this little rock almost tropical by comparison. It was a chill that buried itself in your soul, the black surface - mirrorlike in finish but non reflective - sucking in all warmth and taking hope with it.

If there was a hell, I had a strong suspicion I was looking at a good-sized part of it. The simple, clean lines on the vessel were deceptive, because despite what my eyes and our instruments told me, this thing was anything but simple. Or clean. After a few minutes I felt sick just looking at it, and every step felt harder than the one before - and not because our boots sank into the crusty surface we trudged over.

'It makes my skin crawl,' Nero said, whispering near my right ear, even though there was no way we could be overheard. Something about this sepulchral landscape inhibited talking. 'The worst thing about it is that I don't even know _why _it makes me feel like something dead for a century just grabbed my soul…'

'I'm starting to be a little more worried about something more recently dead grabbing my ankle,' I muttered as we walked. He looked down, seeing what I'd already noticed: just underneath a thin coating of icy snow, the scattered bodies of those who'd been dropped from the transport dumping them on this rock and missed the main drop site further on were strewn underfoot. I tried to avoid stepping on them, but it was impossible. Arms, legs… faces… broken by the fall from the lower atmosphere, a macabre carpet that crunched disturbingly under our boots. Most were well preserved by the cold, recognisable as the individuals they had once been. Here a young woman, Yara's age. There a middle-aged man, paunchy and flabby, with a look of terrified astonishment permanently frozen onto his jowly face. A child's arm. A chthonian tail… one blue-haired young man with unmistakable gill slits on his neck. Blue skin, green skin, caucasion, african, asian... the café au lait of more cosmopolitan worlds… Involuntarily, my lip curled. The machine empire didn't discriminate. Humans had achieved equality at last, and the cost was our humanity.

'I thought, during the Homecoming War,' Nero said quietly, 'that I'd seen humanity sink as low as we could go, when it came to the way we treat each other. I wish I'd been right…'

So did I… I'd seen the city sized factory plants the empire had used at the height of their operation in the Milky Way, powerless to stop the conveyors, because to do so would have killed the thousands caught in the slaughterhouses mechanisation depended on. I'd watched people march willingly into those factories, their eyes so fixed on the prize of eternal life, they never stopped to consider what the cost would be. I'd seen the planets they'd left behind, places where the old, infirm and small children - abandoned by their parents as too young or frail for either life extraction or mechanisation - died of starvation and neglect, only a few surviving, and those then preyed upon by corporations - Doppler Corp the prime example - looking for cheap labour. We didn't need to go looking for enemies in the stars. We took them with us.

To one side Yara cried out and stumbled. She'd tried to avoid a small arm sticking under the ice, and slipped. Franz fielded her expertly with one arm, and whispered something in her ear. Whatever it was at least earned him a grateful, if sad, smile.

Then we reached the top of the ridge, and at Cren's signal, dropped to the ground to avoid being seen. The chthonian and Martinez had found a large granite rock to shelter behind, and we wriggled into position, to look down into the valley below.

I took out my viewer and trained it on the scene below. The screen slowly zoomed into the details, focusing on the black ribbon that stretched between where the metanoids were working, and the titanic ship looming overhead. Gold and silver armoured figures were directing gangly robots with multiple arms which were thawing and hauling bodies out of the ice, and grading them as they tossed them either onto the top of the organic conveyor belt that wriggled in more dimensions than my brain was comfortable processing, or under it, where they vanished into the darkness that it exuded like a thick mist. I shivered inside my nice warm suit.

'What the hell is that?' Nero, lying next to me peering through his own viewer asked in hushed tones.

'It's organic, I think, for any given value of organic,' I whispered back - not sure why, because there was no way they'd hear us, but something about the scene made it hard to raise my voice. 'Those robots look familiar…'

'Doppler Corp,' Nero said bluntly. 'But Harlock - I'm afraid those _aren't _robots…'

I looked again. Roughly egg shaped, with long, double jointed limbs, but flat, rather than properly ovid like the Lar Matallian _Aladdin _class. The bodies were pale, looked like a ceramic alloy, but the top - the head, was transparent…

Oh. I put down the viewer on the rock in front of me. 'That is disgusting…' I muttered. 'And horrific. Is that what I think it is?'

'Captain?' Franz had wriggled closer, and I handed him the viewer. 'Oh. Eww. Is that…?'

'Brains,' I finished for him. He handed the viewer back and swallowed hard. 'I'd heard rumours…'

'Just vat-grown, right?' Franz asked pleadingly. I wished I could answer "yes" to that. I shook my head.

Nero answered for me. 'Why would they bother, when Promethium leaves so much raw material around? They've been harvesting neural tissue for decades, and Hechi incorporates it into organic neural networks. Turns out it's a cheaper process than mining rare earths for the basic day-to-day computing needs of the planets they own.'

'Captain…' Franz tapped me on the arm. 'Ali was right. You should have gone after these bastards harder after the war.'

'Ali forgets we had a plague to deal with, the Counts Mecha and then the Mazone,' I pointed out. 'But I take your point. We put them down hard in our galaxy, and like Promethium, they found a bolt hole out here in and around Andromeda. And it seems they have some friends in common…'

But he was right - I _had _dropped the ball on Doppler and his hunchbacked handler, Hechi. Taking out a mega-corporation that had had its fingers in almost every aspect of daily life in the galaxy through one ghost subsidiary or another for over five hundred years though? That would take far more effort and time to do safely than _I_ could bring to the table… We'd toppled Promethium only because she'd not really had time to consolidate her position. Doppler Corp had its tentacles threaded throughout the galaxy, and they were dug in deep, sucking the lifeblood out of humanity.

They were also behind or involved in most of the atrocities humanity had faced in the last hundred years or more. If the Homecoming War - and Hannibal's attempts to destabilise them in its aftermath, when he'd founded what became the Millennial Thieves - hadn't been able to wipe them out, they could withstand anything _I_ could throw at them.

I was going to have to ask Hannibal to bring his considerable resources to bear on them after this. If they were in bed with Promethium, the rebel nibelung and these metanoids, they were becoming more than a pest, and needed a short sharp lesson in over-reaching...

'That is truly disturbing,' Martinez muttered, bringing my attention back to our current predicament.

'The eldritch conveyor belt, or the creepy brains in a jar robots?' I muttered back. 'Sweet Earth, Esteban - they're _feeding _that thing with the leftovers…'

Only the intact, undamaged bodies were being harvested for transport into the gaping maw at the base of that giant ship, where the rippling black tentacled flatworm ended. They'd been at it for hours, and judging from the rate they were moving them along, must have taken thousands.

It didn't escape my notice that they hadn't exactly made much of a hole in the layers of bodies in the valley below - according to my readings we were about two hundred feet above the current surface, and the bedrock was about eight hundred feet below _that_.

'They're building an army…' Nero muttered next to my ear. 'But that doesn't make sense. Why? They could easily destroy any planet from well outside an orbital defence line…'

Something I'd read in the materials Daiba had sent from Niflheim clicked in my head. 'Terror,' I said succinctly. 'It's a weapon of terror. Blowing up planets? It's something too big for people to comprehend properly. It's the old saw about one death being a tragedy, a million a statistic. People fear what's right in front of them far more - think of the effect seeing your loved ones shambling towards you blindly intent on ripping you to pieces? Or in the case of the "fresher" - for want of a better word - reboots turning on their former associates and family. It's our worst nightmares walking and talking. We know they want our life force, to open that gate fully, but they thrive on our fear.' I shifted back to a kneeling position, ready to get to my feet. 'When we've got that ship clear and taken it out, I'm coming back and torching this body dump. I was wrong: my sentiment over these mass graves will have to take a back seat - we can't let these creatures have such ready access to raw materials.'

There was a mass grave on Tabito - though the bodies there were not preserved - the victims of the Deathshadow plague were buried under an artificial hill just outside of town. The thought of some_thing_ digging up our oldest daughter, our stillborn son, members of my crew, or Zero and his youngest boys made my blood run cold. 'Hannibal's going to have to get tough with Layla Shura on the issue back home as well.' I checked my pistol for what must have been the sixth time in half an hour. I tapped Franz on the shoulder - my crewman was surveying the scene below us. 'Assessment?'

'There's a group of gold armoured things standing off the planetary east,' he said without taking his gaze away from the viewer. 'Six of them, but one's in fancier armour. Looks more female in design. At least, it's shaped in the usual way - tits, ass - and long gold hair.'

'Nibelung armour,' Nero mused. 'Did they model themselves after the Nibelung?'

'Hardly.' Yara, the young woman Franz seemed to be getting friendly with, had taken the _Thunderbolt's _viewer off the chthonian. 'Doesn't look like one to me. This one's a vain one - just took her helmet down.'

I held my hand out and with only a quick glance to Nero, she handed them over. I took a closer look.

Tall, golden haired - and not figuratively - it really did have a metallic sheen to it, more like a veil of soft gold rather than individual hairs. A deep widows peak over an angular face that was far too smooth and uncanny to be comfortable to look at. The forehead was too wide - the hairline was a lot further back than even the nibelung, receding back from the deep V that almost met the bridge of her nose, all the way over the crown of her skull. The body was thin and the limbs even more oddly attenuated than the nibelung form. Fingers were long and multi jointed, looking at the way her hand flexed around the hilt of a golden sword at her side. The look of bored disdain on that sculpted face with its deep set, almond shaped golden eyes however was universal.

'Change of plan…' I murmured, reholstering my pistol. Instead I drew the gravity sabre and knelt back down to sight along the barrel. 'Franz?'

'On it.' He began softly calling out the wind speed and direction, and distance to target whilst I sighted the rifle.

'Harlock?' Nero asked quietly.

'That golden haired female. She's in charge - you can tell by the way they approach her. Some things are universal…' I breathed in. Breathed out. It was a good half mile, in a strong wind, but I'd made tougher shots. Just not with snow trickling down my back and my knees and chest getting cold from being pressed against ice covered rocks…

In. Out…

I fired, the _ssszzap_ of the energy packet sounding like a literal gunshot to my overly-alert nerves.

It should have been a perfect shot - she'd been slightly turned away from our position, the correction should have been spot on...

So when her hand shot up, snatched something out of the air and that golden eyed stare snapped round to face directly at us, it came as a complete surprise. Franz almost dropped the viewer. 'Holy shit!'

'Franz?'

'Captain… she just… I mean, it kind of vanished in her hand, like she caught a bullet!'

'That was graviton accelerated plasma,' I murmured, checking the scene through the rifle sights. The bitch's mouth twitched in a parody of a smile, and she tipped her hand over as though letting dust fall from her fingers to the ground. Around her the gold figures were pointing at our position, and others were starting to mobilise, running over the valley floor in a ground covering lope, their long legs proving to be backwards-jointed, like a wolf running on its hind legs. 'Son of a bitch. Incoming!'

They were on top of us in seconds, having covered the half mile - uphill - in less time than I could have run a hundred yards on the flat. The vanguard of silver armoured metanoids numbered maybe fifteen, and our weapons were mowing them down as they loped up the hill, cutting legs and heads off with equal facility. Yara's weapon proved ineffective - one she scythed the legs off was growing them back almost as soon as it hit the ground. I barked a quick heads-up to Franz, and he tossed his weapon to her, exchanging it for my cosmo dragoon. For my part I kept hold of the sabre rifle, and when they were too close to shoot, flicked the controls over to the gravity edge, and leaped down into the fray to lay about me with it, sending body parts flying. I was aware of Martinez yelling insults off to one side, the massive bolter spitting death. On my blind side, I briefly caught sight of Nero out of the corner of my left eye, cloak swirling around him as he ran, taking up a position at my side, his own blade flashing, alternating with his cosmogun.

'In case you haven't noticed,' he shouted, 'we're outnumbered!'

'So? At least you won't need to be a good shot to hit something!' I yelled back.

'You're as crazy as your ancestor!'

'Just watch your damn cloak!' I called back, as a blast from one of the metanoid weapons almost took my ear off, deflected by his swirling black shield. Mine had already taken shots from several directions, and the smell of singed leather was overwhelming.

Our foes didn't carry weapons - they _were _weapons. Energy spat from outstretched limbs - not all of them growing out of the usual places on a humanoid body. They could, if we didn't drop them on the first hit, grow their protean body parts seemingly at will. And whilst the _Arcadia's _weaponry was pretty effective, _Thunderbolt's _\- lacking a hundred years of Tochiro's bored fiddling with the specs and two genius engineers with too much time on their hands - didn't have the same ability to modulate the energy frequency, and were nowhere near as powerful.

We couldn't let them close with our position. Like the reboots, these armoured versions had a tendency to explode when damaged beyond repair, although anything hit by my weapons just dropped and twitched. Franz grinned at me when I looked across, enjoying himself far too much. The three of us - myself, Franz and Nero - had been drawn further down the hill out into the open, and the rest of them were hunkered down behind the outcrop, mowing down anything stupid enough to keep running towards them, sheltering behind the rock to avoid low-flying body parts.

They'd paused after the first rush however. We'd taken down at least two dozen in that first wave, and the rest had slowed down to take our measure. They'd also modulated their energy signatures - it was now taking me two shots to bring them down.

'They're adapting to the weapons,' I called out to Nero and Franz. 'Fall back!' I pressed the button on my cuff that would bring Kei running. Time to take this fight outside…

'Too late!' Nero shouted back. He pointed.

We'd been pulled out of position, running headlong into the ruck as we had. We were a good hundred yards away from the redoubt, in the open - and two of the gold figures along with about ten more silver ones had outflanked us. They were between us and the outcrop - and Martinez and his friends couldn't risk firing and hitting us. Supporting them were several of Doppler's creepy brainbots.

'Shit.'

'My sentiments exactly,' I told Franz. He handed my pistol back and pulled his axe off its shoulder mount, hefting it lightly. Nero unsheathed his own sabre, and we stood back to back, the three of us, trying to cover all angles. Nero and myself with pistols and swords, Franz with his double-handed axe. 'Wait,' I cautioned the pair. 'Let them get in each other's way when they attack - we split up, we expose ourselves to a flank attack. Sword's length apart, gentlemen. Let's give them a taste of the pirates' way, shall we?'

We shifted our position, spreading out to allow us to swing without taking the head off the man next to us. I was at a disadvantage here, as well as a liability - one eye blind left me a lot of head-turning to do to watch my right side, and it meant Nero would be watching for two that side - if he remembered.

I missed Kei at this point - she always knew just where to stand, without any prompting. But right now she had my back and would be screaming in to the rescue any second in the _Arcadia_.

The metanoids charged.

Any second…

...closely followed by the _Thunderbolt… _No rush, guys, take your time...

Warp vids make it look so easy - the hero casually fires the guns he holds in both hands, in different directions simultaneously, and hits everything he doesn't aim at. Try it in real life and unless you're facing a solid wall of attackers, all you do is fire wildly. And let's not get into recoil issues - the cosmo guns have one hell of a kick and the gravity sabres aren't much better when used as a ranged weapon. What looks effortlessly cool in fiction just makes you look like a twat in reality. At best you get to alternate shots - especially if you're short one working eyeball.

And if your enemy is as fast as ours, you get one or two shots off before you're reduced to hand to hand - or in this case, blade to hand. Our blades hummed, pale blue lightning flashing in my peripheral vision as Franz swept another head off, or went low for the knees as a blast went over his head. My shoulder and wrist started to tire after the first three strokes - even with the powered blade, it takes some strength to slice through armour.

_Where were our ships_…? I was aware of movement behind me - I'd gotten separated from Nero, leaving a gap, and whirled round, cloak flaring, to compensate. Damn thing almost hauled me off balance - it's heavy - so I missed taking Erik the red-head's head off by a whisker.

'Hey!'

'Sorry - sneaking up on people not the best idea in a situation like this!' I shouted into his shocked face. I caught sight of the other three joining us. 'Afraid you were missing out on something?' I asked.

'Can't let you guys have all the fun,' he laughed, his next shot taking a brainbot in the "face", sending it tumbling into two metanoids and knocking them down the slope. 'Strike! He gets the spare…' He jabbed a hand skyward. 'That, and I think the cavalry arrived…'

I couldn't spare a glance upwards, as one of the golden figures was right in front of us. I pushed Erik out of the way and intercepted the metanoid's blade - red lightning clashed with blue, and I was face to face with the female I'd tried to take out what felt like hours ago.

Crossed between us, the blades sparked and fizzed. 'Come to do your own dirty work?' I snarked. Pointlessly, I figured, because why would they speak…

'Come to see you die, Harlock,' she snarled. Up close her face was far too smooth and angular to be anything other than plain weird. 'Your reputation precedes you, and not undeserved. You destroyed two of our ships. There will not be a third and your meddling in our affairs ends today.'

I jumped back to get some distance and disengage. 'Nice to be appreciated. Now why don't you just die like a good abomination from the dawn of time?' I had to shout above the roar and rumble of the two Deathshadows as they launched their lesser batteries against the Phantasma. Our blades clashed again, her parry inhumanly strong. My still healing wrist protested vehemently, and I dropped my pistol to toss the blade into my other hand, the move not even giving her a second's pause, as she flicked her blade over mine, and into my shoulder…

...where it glanced off the new, shiny cuirass under my cloak. _Thank you, Maji_…

Too late I realised the bitch was drawing me out of position, away from our small group of defenders. And something was shifting under my boots, the ground trembling and shivering. And not from the metanoid vessel readying itself to take off - that vibration was a deeper, more intense sensation. This was more immediate, closer to the surface…

I could see over her shoulder, down into the valley. That weird giant flatworm was collapsing, oozing into the ground like tar, seeping into ice, and where it vanished, the ground was heaving and bubbling. The valley floor crumbled, bodies and body parts spewed out, crawling and lurching - depending on the degree of viability - towards us.

I dodged the next blow and slipped on the now suddenly unstable ground beneath my feet, that slip saving me from the gravity blade slicing straight through my head. I managed to keep my footing, and my own blade slid straight towards her heart. I didn't wait for it to penetrate, but fired the rifle at point blank range as it slid into her chestplate. I rolled away, pushing her falling body away with my foot before she exploded, showering me with white-hot debris, though thankfully the cloak, falling over me as I rolled, covered anything vital.

I was attempting to throw back the heavy weight of leather and state of the art electronics and stand up again when a hand shot out from the ice at my feet and closed around my ankle.


	24. Chapter 23

Why does it always have to be the leg I've trashed more times than I care to think about? I've smashed it falling off Olympus Mons, in the explosion that wrecked my life, had it stabbed, shot and broken so many times Luna tells me it's only the repairs holding it together, despite the dark matter healing boost I get from being one of the _Arcadia's _crew…

It's as though it has a bloody sign on it saying "attack here". Because the zombie horde tearing itself out of the ground couldn't go for the left leg, could it? No, I had my right ankle wrapped in a bony, frozen grip, and the disembodied hand yanked my foot right out from under me, and I went down hard on the frozen ground, my face narrowly missing a razor sharp rock sticking out of the ice. I lost my grip on the sabre, which skittered downhill coming to rest against the remains of a long dead tree stump, shattering the fragile, frozen wood into icy splinters as it hit. The dragoon was jolted from my hand but at least I was able to scrabble for it, and get my finger back on the butt as yet more rotting corpses burst from the permafrost, reaching for any part of me they could reach, as though drawn to my body heat. I kicked out at the rotting hand that still had hold of my ankle, but it had a literal death-grip on my boot, the bony fingers losing bits of the flesh still left on them as I squirmed to get free, swearing under my breath.

'Hold still!'

Nero's voice was like a whip crack. I froze - not literally, though another half hour might just do it… His gravity blade - a rather more robust, wicked, curved beast closer in design to a cutlass, scythed down close enough to my boot to sear the leather. The dead hand let go, and with the help of an outstretched hand, I got to my feet, Nero's strong grip pulling me away from those skeletal hands reaching through the ice. I stamped on one that had hold of the edge of my cloak and something screeched as the bones shattered under my metal soled boot.

'Thanks,' I told him, once I'd gotten my breath back. Someone - Franz - threw my sabre back to me and I caught it one-handed with a flourish. You could call it well-practiced. Tochiro usually opined it was one way to hide the fact that with one eye, it was one way to cover up that you tended to fumble the catch…

'Don't thank me yet!' Nero's cutlass was jabbed in the direction of still more figures heading our way. 'The damned things are still coming!'

Overhead, the _Arcadia _and the _Thunderbolt _strafed the lumbering Phantasma as it strained to leave the ground. Those black tendrils snapped back into the body of the thing like over-stretched elastic. There was no sign of any of the armoured metanoids, but they'd left plenty of their zombie shock troops behind to annoy us.

''Kei!' I yelled into the commlink.

'No need to shout - you're coming through loud and clear,' she snapped. 'We're kind of busy up here!'

'I need that thing out of this gravity well,' I told her. 'Then whilst you and Yanez are trashing it, send me some air support - I want this entire valley scorched.'

'What about you?' Irked at being distracted she might be, but I know my Kei well enough to know she was trying desperately not to turn the ship round and high-tail it back to pick me up. I'd pay for this later.

'We're on the hill. I'm pretty sure our guys can avoid hitting it if they try hard enough,' I replied, trying to ease back on the sarcasm, whilst back to back with Nero and blasting away at everything that moved. I had vague memories of playing this game as a kid, and it had been a lot more fun thirty years ago. And the zombies had fallen apart more quickly…

'Then get back up it, and stay behind something a little more robust than a snowball,' she snapped, cutting the connection.

Behind me, I could hear Nero's side of a similar conversation.

'Ever wonder if they'd ever just leave us behind one day, if we push them too far?' he asked, shouting over the noise of our pitched battle.

I blasted another rank of stumbling corpsicles into oblivion, and mentally swore off sausages for a month. 'If they haven't done it yet, I think we're safe!' I shouted back. 'I'm advised we need to take cover!'

'Same here.' He waved that ridiculous cutlass to get the attention of his crewmates, firing it in the air. 'Fall back!' he bellowed. 'Up the hill!'

'Franz - Martinez?' I used the comms. Much easier on the tonsils. Covering for each other, my pair retreated towards our position, step by backwards step at first, but soon realising the best plan was the example set by Nero's people - they just turned and ran for it, and in the end it was Nero and myself who retreated step by step, covering the rest of them until we were back where we'd started, just in time to watch the Phantasma take off, those black bands whirling like a whipping top, springing vertically into the sky, firing at the _Thunderbolt _as it made a contemptuous fly-by, all guns blazing. From further away the _Arcadia's _guns spat in unison, and that symmetrical double-cone faltered slightly, the black bands turning misty in places as it struggled to cope with the damage. It whirled even faster, and shot upwards, pursuing the _Thunderbolt_, the _Arcadia _in pursuit.

I had little time to wonder if they'd succeed: Hundreds of reboot corpses were still heading straight for us, and as fast as our weapons mowed down the front ranks, more were still coming from the seemingly endless supply of discarded bodies in the valley below. And if the charge in the last energy pack I'd slapped into my pistol was anything to go by, we were getting alarmingly low on firepower…

'Captain!' Franz pointed at the sky. 'I think the cavalry just arrived!'

We had half a dozen fighters we could realistically put into the air during a fight, given our tendency to keep a much lower crew complement than the Deathshadows had been built for. Six SW-190s with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on their hulls were swooping down, engines screaming. They however were only the vanguard - coming in from the side, I counted well over thirty planes in the old dark green livery of the former Solar System Alliance fleet.

After that, I didn't see much of anything, because thirty six space wolves firing at the same geographical area lights up even a daylight sky like a fireball, and the accompanying detonations as they cluster-bombed the area on the second fly-by left my ears ringing.

And after that, we were just mopping up the leftovers, until those planes strafed the mob of rotting corpses and we were ducking partly defrosted body parts. Half a skull smacked into Franz's shoulder and he shrieked. I reached over and flicked an eyeball off his collar, but forbore to twit him about it. His face was white with pain, and the arm hung limply at his side. I gave him a shove on the uninjured side towards the rear of our rocky redoubt. 'Get down and stay down,' I ordered. 'Give Cren your weapon.' The chthonian was totally out of ammunition and had resorted to chucking some of the loose rubble lying underfoot, and on one occasion, a couple of the body parts we'd been bombarded with had been thrown back with admirable accuracy but lamentable results.

* * *

The light was starting to fade by the time a party of our respective crew trudged up the hill from where they'd parked the planes. The valley and the hillside we sat on was now just so much ice blackened with ichor and ash, and scorched, slagged rock . I sagged against the rocky outcrop, Nero leaning against it equally wearily, and holstered my depleted weapons. I stared down at the blasted landscape below, still glowing in the deepening twilight. 'Your guys… really know how to make a statement,' I said eventually as we watched the fires burn.'

'You can _never _bring enough firepower to bear on a problem,' he replied with some feeling.

'Captain?' Franz spoke up weakly from near my left foot. I looked down. Yara was tying a makeshift sling around his neck to support his broken arm. 'Did you get the data you wanted?'

'I should think so,' I drawled.

'Good. Next time, can you just do the research over the warp net?' The little yelp he ended the sentence on was lost in the deep bark of laughter from my fellow captain, but not to Yara, who increased her ministrations, nor, from the eye-rolling sigh Martinez gave him, on his crewmate.

'You do know it's a two mile hike back to the planes?' Nero said once he'd stopped laughing. We both slumped down to sit on the rocky ground, our gravity cloaks providing a little protection against a frozen arse, but not much.

'Bugger that,' I told him. 'Esteban - find out whether Kei and Yanez have finished playing with that creepy-assed ship, and if they have, tell them to drop a workboat with one of the ATVs will you?'

'Captain?' The red-head - Erik? - gave his captain a pleading glance that would have embarrassed a puppy. Nero nodded once, and the youth gleefully got onto the comms to request a pick-up. I shifted uncomfortably, because even through the thick leather, a bone-deep cold was starting to seep.

'Put the grav field on low,' Nero advised, both eyes closed. 'That way you're not sitting on the ground…'

I unfastened it from the cuirass and spread it out, motioning my guys to sit on it with me. No sense in the three of us freezing our backsides off if we didn't have to. And since I'm such a good captain, I didn't even raise an eyebrow when Franz invited Yara to snuggle up on it as well. Frankly it was all I could do by then to rest my chin on my knees and close my eyes, taking my cue from Nero, who - judging by the low rumble near my left ear, could, it seems, sleep anywhere.

* * *

_Meanwhile, on Ventimiglia_

Mamoru leaned on the railing of the ship next to the rope ladder down to the dinghy and tried not to smirk as Rei practically teleported down the ladder into the small boat that bobbed alongside the _Tonnere_. 'You do know the big ship is safer, right?' he called down cheekily. With almost superhuman prescience he ducked Selen's hand to the back of his head.

'Be nice,' she chided.

'I am, under the circumstances,' he replied with a grin. 'You haven't had to lie there in the bunk above his every night listening to him bitch about how much he hates open water…' He watched as the small boat pulled away towards the beach a few hundred yards away, Rei clutching the sides with a death grip, Motherball hovering over his head chirping at him. He sighed. 'Bloody hell, it's hot…' He looked down ruefully at his shorts. 'I've run out of stuff to take off…'

'Oh, just lose the shorts,' David told him cheerfully from nearby, where the tall, blond clone was hauling in on a thick hawser, coiling the wet rope effortlessly as he did so, his arms bulging with muscle, to Mamoru's teenaged chagrin. 'Most of us go naked on land.'

'But not on board,' Mamoru pointed out, noting David's cut-off t-shirt, gloves and shorts.

'Hell no - rope burns are a bitch.' David grinned at him, and outright smiled at Selen. His blue eyes surreptitiously eyed her from head to toe and back again. In a light green sarong and matching bikini top, her hair tied loosely back, she looked a fraction of her actual age, and her body was lean, and tanned from the days spent aboard the ship going to and from the hidden transports. 'The last thing you want is your block and tackle caught up in the block and tackle… And don't feel so defensive, kiddo - I've seen your dad, you'll fill out well enough in time. You're what - fifteen?'

'Sixteen.'

'See? Can't you tell him?' He addressed this last to Selen.

Selen laughed. 'Oh, believe me, I try. But I've raised three of my own plus Rei and they all seem to think they're being short-changed by puberty not delivering chiselled abs and a virile carpet overnight.' She said this last with a pointed look at David's muscular six-foot-four frame, with its slab-like chest and golden pelt.

He grinned and flexed his pecs. 'Good genes, I'm told.'

'Hank had his moments…' she smiled sadly. 'I miss him. And Dan.'

'Maybe there's hope?' Mamoru asked. 'I mean, if they copied him and Douglas, maybe they still have them somewhere? If David here and Morgan are part of some super-soldier programme, maybe they'd want to keep going back to the source?'

David frowned. 'Doppler's also using kidnapped scientists and experts in his masked man programme as well, don't forget. Gotta say - once this mess is cleaned up, I'm tempted to help you guys look for your friends. In a way, they're mine and Morgan's fathers, right? Or brothers, depending on how you look at it. Captain Nero always taught us to take care of family - whether that's by blood or by fate.'

The little boat was heading back for a second load now, two dark-skinned men on the oars who David had introduced as Sea-spider and Moko. Too old to be clones, they were both older members of the Thunderbolt's crew who'd "retired" to the tropical paradise. They tended to bicker good-naturedly over everything. They called up a cheery greeting to Selen as they tied off, and almost tipped over the boat vying to be the one to help her down into it.

With Halia, Galena and David along for the trip back to shore with Mamoru on the same bench as Selen, she laughed off her admirers' offer of a cushion and picked up the conversation.

'We'd given up trying to find them… it's been so long, we'd lost all hope. But you're right - we shouldn't forget them, or stop looking. I'll be more than happy to arrange for a new search once we get back to our own galaxy. From what I hear Doppler's probably moved his more dubious projects out of the SDF's reach anyway…'

'...which might explain why you and dad never found them?' Mamoru asked. 'I'd like to help - Takuma - Uncle Dan's son - is a good friend as well as family. And Lisa I know would be over the moon if we could find her dad.'

'Lisa?' David asked.

'Hank's daughter,' Mamoru told him, with a grin. 'She's a couple of years older than me and Tak. One seriously smart strawberry blonde bombshell with some kick-ass piloting skills just like her dad - and tops it all off by taking my mom as a role model. Seriously - dad gave her one of mom's e-clipboards for her birthday when she was seven, and Takuma's never forgiven him!'

David shook his head. 'Bloody hell… this just keeps getting better and better…'

Galena slapped him on the back. 'Yep. You have a biological daughter older than you are…'

'Well thanks for that, Gallie,' he grumbled at her. The boat bumped gently against the pier and he climbed out to tie off, offering his hand to Galena and Selen in turn, leaving Mamoru to hop up onto the decking under his own steam. His awkward landing was steadied by Rei who shot him a grin before he could thank him.

'Graceful, you're not,' Rei told him.

'I didn't land on my face.'

'You're not Wattie.'

The pier took that moment to rock alarmingly, almost tipping the pair into the water. It was Mamoru's turn to grab hold of Rei and prevent him from pitching headfirst into the clear blue waters. 'Bloody hell, Zero, you really need to shed a few pounds…'

'Fuck off. Denser bone structure, remember?' Rei glanced around nervously 'What the hell was that? An earthquake?'

'Venti-quake?' Mamoru replied absently, looking just as nervous. 'Maybe we'd better just leg it to shore?'

'Way ahead of you,' Rei grunted, suiting action to words. He let Mamoru keep pace with him over the hundred yards or so the pier extended out from the sheltered beach. A medium-sized transport had landed during their sojourn in the submerged transports and now perched on the narrow strip of weathered lava that served as a beach. Ianthe's unmistakable silhouette lurked near the ramp.

Selen was already running back to them and the boys lost no time in reaching her side, Mamoru slightly out of breath, Rei looking as though he'd just strolled over. 'Mom?' he asked, a hand resting on the hilt of his pistol. Selen grabbed him, pulled him close then gave him a firm shove in the direction of the beach. 'Head for the transport,' she ordered, her voice calm and brisk.

'Aunt Selen?'

'Incoming. Three ships, capital class.'

'So not metanoids?' Mamoru kept pace with her, his long legs easily covering the ground. Rei had sprinted ahead, Motherball flashing red above his shoulder as he reached the small group of Nero's people gathered at the end of the pier.

'Promete class. I think Doppler Corp have come for their "property"', she half snarled in reply. She gave him a push in the direction of Nero's daughters. 'Go with the girls, Mamoru-chan. Protect Ianthe and the children. They have contingency plans.'

'But dad would want me to make sure you were okay,' he argued. She quelled his objections with a look. 'Mamoru - I think you're forgetting just who is supposed to be protecting whom… You and Rei help with the evacuation of personnel. Now go! I'll help David with the defenses.'

He went, reluctantly, casting a glance back over his shoulder as he ran. Selen had hold of David's shoulder and was talking quickly and firmly, the young man nodding as they jogged in the direction of the cliff that formed the rim of the old volcano. Rei hung back a little to let him keep up. 'Why is it,' Mamoru asked between breaths as they ran, 'that this sort of shit always hits just when you take your eye off the ball thinking you can get some downtime?'

'Karma?' Rei reached out and pulled hard on Mamoru's shorts, almost toppling both of them as a jet screamed overhead, blasterbolts slamming into the black sand less than their height away from them, rendering it into instant obsidian. Both flinched from the heat. 'Shit. Pick up the pace, Mamo.'

Ahead of them, Ianthe waved frantically at the entrance to a cave in the foot of the cliffs a few hundred feet away. Both youths slid to a stop beside her, their footing uncertain on the wet black sand. 'The transport's not safe. We're taking shelter. The tunnels go back for several hundred yards,' she told them.

'What if they score a hit on the cliff?' Mamoru asked.

'It's over two hundred feet thick - you'd need capital class weaponry to do any damage and if they bring that to bear, that's the least of our problems. I've got all hands available heading for our planes, so you, Hallie, Gallie and Dione need to protect the young ones. I've got reports of landing craft filled with troops and those dreadful combat robots Doppler Corp favours, so I need all the guns on the ground I can find.'

'Should you be out here?' Mamoru stared pointedly at her hugely pregnant form. She glared at him.

'I'm stuffed full of baby, not sick, kiddo. And despite all the usual clichés, not about to gasp, grab my stomach and screech "my waters just broke!" for dramatic effect any time soon. So if you two would care to focus your concerns on those who actually need them, I'd suggest you take your arses over in the direction of the caverns and give the revivification teams and their charges some cover!'

'Yes, grandmama,' Mamoru said, placing a light kiss on her cheek. She swatted him away like a gnat, to Rei's amusement. 'Well, you are… technically.'

'Technicalities be damned, brat. Call me that again and you'll find out just how grandmotherly I'm not…'

Rei grabbed his collar and hauled him away. 'Don't worry, Ianthe, I'll explain the facts of life to him as we go…' He set off at a steady jog, to allow Mamoru to keep up. The younger boy was already a little breathless, but as always refusing to give in. 'Pace yourself,' Rei advised seriously. 'You know your dad'll fret if you overdo it.'

'I think… that's… the least… of... my... problems… right... now.' Sand exploded less than twenty feet away, showering them with superheated glassy shards, kept at bay only by a timely intervention from the hovering motherball. 'Thanks, Boreas!' The hovering ball chirped at him, her forcefield shimmering slightly as it covered the pair - not enough to stop a full-on blast even from a handgun, but at least it blocked the shrapnel from the shots that missed. The pair headed for a group of teens and small children, running towards the relative safety of the caves. Another blast hit close by, and he swore under his breath. 'Where is that?'

'On the edge!' Rei pointed to where a large machine squatted on the edge of the rocky cliff overlooking the wooden hall. Blocky and ugly, two storeys high, its brutal outline dominated the skyline above them. Two large blasters swivelled and spat plasma at the beach. The prefab building that housed the reanimation team was already engulfed in flames. 'Fucking hell, that thing's huge!'

'Industrial mining machine,' Mamoru panted. 'Recognise it from Ali's descriptions.'

They reached a group of youngsters running for safety, and ushered them ahead, the pair watching for attack as they ran. 'Lucky for us its pilot is fucking useless…' Rei remarked. 'Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if he was standing inside it…'

'They're not usually pointed at moving targets…' Mamoru pointed out.

Another blast caused them to swerve, and two of the smaller children tripped over. This time, even through the shield Mamoru flinched as several tiny shards peppered his face and arms with white-hot pinpricks. A little girl screamed, and he stopped to pick her up, the boy with her just needed a hand up to get to his feet, and looked equally tearful. Neither looked to be more than five years old. 'Okay?' he asked. Both nodded, and the little girl wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder. 'C'mon. Almost there!' He offered his hand to the boy, and gave the small paw a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

'Mamo!' Rei's shout was all the warning he had, as something punched him in the shoulder and he pitched forwards into the sand. He had to let go of the boy's hand in order to shield the little girl from his weight, and landed badly. His left shoulder felt as though it was on fire and the girl landed on his right wrist, with it turned underneath them. The boy screamed and he reached out - with difficulty, to try and scoop him up and pull him closer.

The droning buzz getting closer had him scrabbling to reach his pistol, dropped in his fall. A small hand reached out and grabbed it, pushing it back towards him. He smiled into the pale face framed by dark elf-locks, rolled over and fired at the robot bearing down on them. The flattened ovoid burst apart, scattering its shell, skeletal limbs, and parts of something pink and squishy that Mamoru really didn't want to examine too closely as he flicked chunks out of his hair. 'Thanks.' The boy blinked back frightened tears as Mamoru hauled him to his feet and gave him a push in the direction of the caves. Little girl still clinging to his neck he put his best foot forward and tried to put the growing fatigue out of mind. 'Bloody stupid body…' he muttered. 'And why does this shit never happen to Wataru?'

He was struggling for breath and stumbling slightly on spent legs as he reached the entrance to the cave, and larger hands than his were taking his charges off him. He collapsed against the damp wall just inside the opening, and waved off the gentle hand Halia placed on his shoulder. 'S'fine,' he told her. 'Just overdid it a bit.'

'My bad.' Rei dropped to the damp rocky floor next to him. 'I keep forgetting.'

'Lucky you.' He risked a quick look over Rei's shoulder. 'Where's your moms?'

'Blasting away at anything that moves. There's about a dozen of these brain-bot things out there…' he snarled this last. Mamoru glanced over to where the children were being ushered further into the cave system by their elders. He brushed black sand off his pistol and checked the charge. Half left, and two caps in his belt…

Rei tapped his hand to get his attention. 'That large thing on the cliff - that's an industrial driller, you said?'

'Yeah? So?' Realisation dawned. 'They know about the caves!'

'They were herding us here. The bastards knew the Thunderbolt had left - and they know about the transports. Nero's sprung a leak somewhere, and not just to the metanoids… Blaze and Hannibal are probably walking right into a trap.'

'Not our problem,' Mamoru pointed out. 'This is. Help me up. Hallie?'

The young woman frowned. 'Problem?'

'Yeah. There's a big-ass drill up on the cliff - they've been firing at the beach, but that was just to send us running in here. Once they aim it at the ground…'

'Son of a…' She tapped her commlink. 'David? Can you get someone to do a flyby of that weird tank thing on the cliff? A well placed blast up its arse would be greatly appreciated before it starts trying to dig us out…'

David's answer was a barely audible crackle next to Mamoru's ear, his head close to Halia's. 'No, we can't leave the caves - there's still a group of those brainbots out there.'

'They won't want to kill too many of their "product",' Rei muttered in Mamoru's other ear. 'Maybe we could take a few out?'

'Rei?'

Both Mamoru and Rei tapped their comms as Selen's voice came over their earpieces. 'Mom?'

'I heard that - David and I are pinned by the pier, but there's a fighter wing on its way. Stay put, but keep the kids as close as you can to the exit.'

'But…'

She cut him off sharply. 'Not negotiable, Rei. Stand fast and protect the children. The beach will be a kill zone.'

He muttered something unrepeatable as he hunkered down next to Mamoru, but he stayed put, green light flickering between his hands as he twisted his fingers as though toying with an intangible cats' cradle.

* * *

On the far side of the beach, Selen crouched behind a breakwater, David at her side, and peeked over the salt-stained, cracked wood. 'Your people are pinned on the other side of the cliff, and in the caves. The Tonnere had to put back out to sea to avoid attack - they seem to be ignoring her for now. But that leaves us with no-one to take out those battle-bots of Doppler's…'

'We've got six planes in the air, but the first wave back at the island took out the rest. Our ships are engaging the capital class vessels - a tough fight, but we're scrappy, and our crews know their trade.' He wriggled closer to her side and peered over the side. 'They're just in a holding pattern… watching the caves, but not advancing.'

'Because they expect that thing to do their work for them.' Selen made a tiny gesture in the direction of the driller on the top of the cliff, which was lumbering into position on half-tracks, its two massive blasters tipping down to aim at the thin vegetation covering the dark granite. 'Typical Zone Industries - over engineered, too big and bulky and cheaply constructed - but it'll do the job.'

'Thankfully the transport is sheltered from direct fire,' David murmured. 'But once that thing starts digging…'

'ETA on those planes?'

'Five minutes. And we don't have the firepower to hold off the 'bots.' He punctuated this last by firing several shots at the advancing robots, picking off three and damaging two more. Selen's blaster bolts finished off those with well-placed shots to the visible brain matter inside the transparent front plates. He did a double-take at her gravity sabre. 'I thought you were carrying a pistol?'

'Extendable,' she replied tersely. 'Handy but lacks the robust power-pack.' She deftly slid the pack out of the plain hilt, marked with a crescent moon embracing a single star, and slapped in a replacement. She sighted along the length and another bot went down with a shrieking scream. 'How far do those caves go back?'

'Not far enough,' David replied. He ducked as several blast bolts sped over their heads, one landing short and sending up molten shards of obsidian. 'They're getting our range…' He leaned back against the breakwater and checked his charge. 'Dammit! This is supposed to be a secret! We don't keep an armoury here - the facility on the caldera is purely for reviving the clones.' A loud, shrill, whining drone partly drowned out his words by the time he'd finished, and he risked a quick look over the breakwater. 'Shit! It's started drilling!'

'David…'

'I know! I know!' His handsome face as grim as he reached for his commlink. 'Kammamuri! Naik! Anyone got their ears on up there? We need a fast strike and extraction down here!'

'We could use the same up here, blondie!' The reply cackled over the 'link. 'Bastards caught us with our pants down, came out of IN-SKIP in the upper atmosphere! Who the fuck is insane enough to try that?'

'Luger,' Selen replied drily. 'At a guess. The One Sane Man in the lot, and a cool head on his shoulders.'

'Well whoever he is, lady,' came the crackling reply, 'he's running rings around us and…'

'Kammamuri!'

'Shit! David! There's more of them coming in, just arrived out of nowhere and…' the link dissolved into static, despite David calling the captain's name into it in vain. 'Fuck!'

A blast almost singed his fair hair and he dropped the commlink to return fire alongside Selen. 'These things just keep on coming!' Over a dozen of the battlebots were arrayed on the narrow shore now, two were entering the transport up the cargo ramp, and three were heading towards the cave mouth. More were rounding the curve of the headland. 'We're so fu-'

The three in front of the cave exploded as three fighters appeared overhead, the sonic boom from their arrival in their wake enough to shake the timbers of the breakwater. 'Ye-ss!' David whooped. The group heading their direction were hit in the next wave. 'Now that's good timing!' Then he looked up as a shadow fell over them. 'Oh… maybe I spoke too soon…' he looked up. 'What the…'

Selen risked taking her eyes off the beach, looked up at the massive ship which hovered overhead, and smiled. 'Reinforcements!' she shouted joyfully into David's ear over the noise of the engines.

David stared at the cloud-sized dirigible that currently blotted out the daylight over the caldera. Underneath the red and black blimp raining pinpoint accurate bolts down at the robot army, he could have sworn what looked like an ancient galleon was suspended from delicate hawsers… He shook his head, but the absurd image refused to go away. And it was quickly joined by the far more familiar sight of a Medusa class battleship, its hull looking like a mechanical replica of the jellyfish it resembled. 'The Mechanical Empire as well?' he muttered. 'Hellfire, are we in it now…'

'Relax!' Selen shouted, unable to hear him over the engine noise, but not really needing to, since his face and body language gave away his sentiments. 'This one's on our side!' She thumbed her own commlink. 'Frank?'

'Your highness. I had it on good authority that annoying purblind gnat of a pirate had gotten you tangled up in his messes again. The least I could do was…'

'Show up and rub his nose in it?' she drawled. 'Gloat later, Frank - I need that driller on the cliff gone, without taking out the caves below - they're stuffed full of refugees, and Rei and Mamoru are in there as well.'

'Leave that to us!' another male voice floated over the comms. 'Needs a bit more finesse that that old bird can deliver!'

'Nazca?'

'In person! Oh, do shut up, Frankie! I'm trying to work this out, unless you want to explain to Harlock why his eldest son got buried under a landslide? No? Didn't think so. Go and military somewhere else, will ya? You're in our way. As usual.'

Selen shook her head at the byplay, and sighed.

'Is everyone on your side like that?' David asked.

''Always in each other's faces but willing to back each other to the hilt when it counts?'

He shrugged. 'Well, if you put it like that…' He stared up at the descending blimp, as it turned with surprising grace to face the massive machine on the cliff-top. Small apertures were opening up in the blimp, aimed at the machine, which quickly responded to the danger, pulling its active lasers out of the ground and slowly - but not slowly enough, bringing them to bear on the ship. 'Is that thing even armed with anything powerful enough?'

'Watch,' Selen advised. 'And learn…'

The driller fired first, a fierce blast landing a hit dead on the front elevation of the blimp, but doing no noticeable damage. The reciprocal blasts from the dirigible likewise at first seemed to be doing little damage to the thick armour plating of the drill, its slab-like sloping sides acting like ancient ablative glassiss plates, Selen realised as she watched. Emeraldas' vessel was only chipping away at the surface, which was taking the hits like so many gnat bites. After only a half dozen shots, the pilot of the machine presumably tired of the game, given that neither machine could inflict any damage on the other, and turned his attention along with his drilling rig back to tunneling through the volcanic rock into the caverns below. Which Selen thought grimly as she tried to concentrate on the advancing battlebots, and not worry about two teenage tearaways and a pregnant young woman, would have made sense if he'd been up against anyone but Nazca…

'That blimp might be big, but it's got bugger all firepower,' David yelled in her ear over the background cacophony. 'That ship hasn't got enough smaller weapons or any large ones. He's barely making a dent in that lumbering hulk! Those sloping glassiss plates…'

'Everything has a weak spot,' she called back, punctuating her words with precision firepower. 'And sometimes neither quantity nor power are not the only solutions to a problem…'

The ship continued to pepper the driller with the battleship equivalent of buckshot, to David's jaundiced eye, but he said nothing, and carried on taking out the almost never-ending parade of mobile brain jars. So the quiet crack that preceded a larger boom as the drill exploded almost slipped his notice. When he looked up, the machine was listing badly on the edge of the cliff, smoke pouring out of several holes it hadn't sported earlier. 'What the…'

'Ablative armour hardens in response to energy weapons and flakes off… hit the surface with a chemical weapon once you've exposed it, and then fire a kinetic weapon at the weakened points.' Selen replied dryly. 'Only works in an oxygen rich atmosphere however…'

'Give me a break!' Nazca's indignant voice chimed in her left ear. 'I'm workin' on it!'

The machine teetered alarmingly, its half-tracks whirring uselessly in mid-air on one side, and slipping on the churned up rubble it had coughed up as semi-molten slag on the other. 'Uh-oh…'

Selen could hear the tell-tale whine of a gravium drive about to go critical, even as the machine toppled over the cliff edge towards the ground directly in front of the cavern entrance. David's wordless, anguished cry of shock and despair echoed in her ears as he watched helpless as the machine fell…

She stood up, and dropped her sabre to the ground. Aware of the danger the battlebots were fleeing, but they'd be too late.

Time slowed to a crawl.

From the entrance of the cavern, Rei and Mamoru saw Selen raise her arms above her head, her auburn hair flowing behind her as though caught in a strong breeze.

But there was no wind on the black, rocky beach.

'MOM!'

Mamoru had to use all of his strength to try and stop Rei from running out, when he realised what she was about to attempt.

Time flowed like tar through a small funnel.

A faint glow surrounded Selen, as she stood, arms raised and outstretched. It flickered in scintillating shades of blue, red, yellow, dancing around her limbs like St Elmo's fire. It spread out in a wave, rippling towards the cavern mouth, dancing over the rocks, sparking every time it hit a rocky outcrop. It spread upwards, to encompass the falling machine, enclosing it in a glittering bubble.

Time ran out.

Mamoru pulled Rei back as the driller crashed into the black sand, only dimly aware of the second, green energy barrier that covered the entrance to the cave in that last fraction of a second. He pressed his face into Rei's back, his arm flung over his friend's face to shield his eyes from the blast he knew was coming.

Everything went white, and the earth shook.


	25. Chapter 24

I don't make a habit of hogging the shower in my quarters - the captain's perks are, to my mind, already a little excessive (not, however, as Kei frequently points out, pricking my conscience or my arid Martian upbringing to the point where cutting out the powerful water shower and the truly decadent hot tub were ever _seriously _considered…) but this time I made an exception. I'd been freezing cold and covered in substances I really didn't want to examine too closely when I'd stepped inside the shower pod well over fifteen minutes ago. Nothing short of the appearance of the entire Machinners fleet would have gotten me out of there, and frankly, it'd be a close call...

I was washing my hair for the third time and hoping this would finally see the water run clear, when the shower door hissed open and a warm, naked body pressed up against my back. Long slender arms were wrapped around my waist.

'Any longer,' Kei murmured against my neck, 'and you'll be as wrinkled as a prune.'

'Another five minutes, that's all. I might actually have thawed out and have some feeling back in my arse by then…' Nothing however was going to wash away the images burned onto my brain, and I had to resist the urge to keep scrubbing anywhere those cold, grasping hands had laid hold of me, even though rationally I knew they hadn't actually touched skin...

She slid her hand down my back, over the curve of my left buttock and gave it a squeeze. Throaty laughter tickled my ear. 'Oh, I think your nerve endings have recovered…' Her hands wandered around to the front, brushing against the treacherous part of my anatomy that had given the game away. I had to restrain her fingers before they started work.

'Oh no you don't… not if you want me out of here anytime soon,' I told her. 'Your technique is… a trifle... counter-productive,' I murmured into her ear after turning around and pinning her gently against the wall, my hands on either side of her shoulders. She's tall, so I don't have to bend my head too far to meet her lips, but I tilted her chin up slightly anyway before claiming them.

Warm and willing though she was, her shoulders told a different story. 'Not your fault it got away,' I told her firmly once I'd got my tongue back. 'It happens. We know these ships are slippery. We'll get it next time.'

She sighed against my shoulder, and I couldn't hide a slight smile. She hates to lose. 'Should have gone for the drive…' she muttered.

'Well Yanez blew it as well, so don't take the blame for the whole mess.' I kissed her forehead. 'We did have a plan B, at least. But if you feel the need to make it up to me…'

'Not up against the wall…'

'Of course not! I'm not a barbarian,' I said with a fairly good imitation of righteous indignation. 'There's a bed the size of a small continent out there, and I appreciate my creature comforts…'

'And you still have a few injuries that haven't healed,' she pointed out. She ran her hands over the more obvious signs. Bruises took rather longer to fade than cuts. 'Not a scratch, they promised me… Maybe you should just get some rest…'

'Hah! Captain Harlock does not let such trifles…' I stopped because she'd convulsed into giggles. 'You're hard on a man's ego, love, you know that?'

She gave me a peck on the cheek. 'You're _my _Harlock, and I wouldn't have you any other way, and you know it, you goof. Hannibal once told me that his brother's disregard for such trivia as broken bones was usually summed up by anyone who knew him in one word: Twat.'

'Hmmph. Sounds like _my _older brother…'

'_Isora_ didn't mean it fondly,' she replied tartly.

No… no he hadn't… Hannibal, however put upon by having a younger brother with severe impulse control problems, had never stopped loving the idiot. I suspected even after all the shit Harlock had pulled over the last hundred years, Hannibal would still drop everything and red-line his ship's engines to get to him if there was a chance in hell of bringing him back from the limbo he'd been stuck in for the last two decades. It's what brothers _do…_

Kei flicked the end of my nose with her finger. 'Oi! Forgetting something?'

'Sorry.' I didn't feel like admitting that I'd suddenly wondered what kind of bastard that made _me _in relation to _my _brother's predicament… Or rather, the synth walking around with my brother's face and memories. Isora had been a dick, yes, but I'd decided years ago the best thing I could do for Lazarus was put him out of _everyone's _misery. And I'd been about to do just that when Nero and his BFF had yanked us off Heavy Meldar without a by-your-leave. Hannibal's loving exasperation sometimes made me feel guilty, just a little, for not maybe trying harder to redeem what was left of Isora…

'How the hell you can get distracted by that arse of a synth when I'm standing here, wet, warm, soapy and naked…' Kei interjected, with one of her heartfelt little sighs.

'How…'

'That little crinkle…' she tapped the space at the top of my nose. 'Just there. You only get it when you're thinking about your brother.'

'Unfinished business, that I really have to deal with once we get home.'

'_We_.'

I accepted the correction. Not much else I could do given that she was on her way towards having my undivided attention with where her hands were wandering. I'd reached a point where coherent speech was going to be a memory for the next half hour or so, when the emergency comm channel beeped.

I helped Kei to her feet, and switched the shower off, mentally cursing whoever had put a speaker in the bathroom. 'Tochiro… this had better be a matter of life and limb…'

_Got Hannibal and Blaze on the line, and they sound well pissed. Khalsa's conferencing with them, they want you_.

Of course they did. Half the time everyone treats me as though I was still some wet behind the ears rookie sitting in a captain's chair way too big for me, the other half apparently the universe will fall apart if I'm not there to prevent it. It's a slippery slope… I'd be rescuing cats and small children before long…

Oh wait...

* * *

I was still a little damp as I pulled on a pair of pants and grabbed a sweater from the pile on the bed. No time for anything fancy. My hair was still wet when I reached the bridge a few minutes later, and took the stairs two at a time, Kei in pursuit, having taken a little longer to pull on a flightsuit. The holographic suite projected several images on the main gantry, in front of the wheel. Hannibal, with Blaze and Ali hovering at his shoulders, and Nero, dark and brooding, with the fairer Yanez at his side. Nobody looked particularly happy, Blaze had caught a nasty cut across his forehead, and Ali was sporting a nasty bruise on his face.

'I suppose it was too much to ask we caught a few hours downtime to recover?' I asked as I dropped into the captain's chair, narrowly avoiding the two kittens Kei scooped deftly out of the way of my arse and the bird's inquisitive beak..

'We took the base, but got caught with our britches down,' Hannibal replied, sounding about as sour as I felt. 'They were waiting for us. Turns out, as I've just informed Khalsa here, that we'd got a traitor with us - and not a reboot - this one was working for Doppler.'

'You were about to tell me who,' Nero replied darkly.

'Van Guld. The backstabbing bastard turned on us when we reached orbit, and called in our position. We lost two ships, in addition to Van Guld's when we took him down. If it hadn't been for the _Miranda _being what she is, it would have been a lot worse. Seems he wasn't aware of some of our capabilities…'

'Told you shagging his daughter was a mistake…' Yanez mouthed to his captain.

'Tall, leggy, blonde, full of kick-ass and sass?' Hannibal asked dryly. The other pirate nodded and grinned. 'For heaven's sake, Khal - you're as bad as my brother…'

'_I_ didn't sleep with _his _wife,' Nero pointed out. Hannibal glared as Nero blithely continued 'though given half a chance…'

'If we could all stay focussed?' I cut across the kibbitzing before it could pick up speed. I wasn't in the best of moods. 'I'm tired, cranky and damp, and more than ready to finish this, pick up my son and get back to equally pressing if less universe-ending matters back home. Hannibal - any news from Ventimiglia? If Doppler knew a good portion of Nero's fleet was heading that way…' I wasn't sure if it was Kei or a kitten that let out a little squeak as the question registered.

'Nothing - although Leopard and a small group of his loyalists…'

'Rebels,' Ali added helpfully. 'That boy's really in denial, isn't he?'

No argument there. Leopard's about face a couple of years ago had taken everyone - except perhaps Selen - by surprise. Declaring himself loyal to the throne as opposed to the current incumbent, he'd pretty much cleared out the human portion of their fleet when he'd left to take over the Andromedan arm of the rebellion under Emeraldas.

Hannibal swatted him, not entirely playfully. '_If_ I can get a word in. Leopard's on his way to help. There's been no signal from the relay in the system for twenty-four hours now. He's got at least six ships with him, plus the _Queen Emeralda_s.'

'Those _Medusa _class ships should be able to handle anything Luger and Prague can throw at them - although Luger's a bit too smart for my liking…' I mused.

'Not smart enough to break with Doppler though,' Hannibal pointed out. 'But we're going to be tied up here for at least a week…'

'We can make it back faster if we push hard,' I said, over Kei's barely audible "Mamoru…" murmured into the soft fluffballs she was still cuddling. 'Mimay?' she was already walking with her purposeful, dainty stride to the control orb. In the background of Nero's hologramme, I could see Freya's tiny form doing likewise. From the fond looks both Yanez and Nero cast in her direction, I was going to have to get firm about requesting they hand her back over, especially given their track record when it came to recruitment… 'How fast can you get us there?' I asked Mimay.

'Three days. Two if you don't get into a firefight _straight _away when we get there…'

I always wondered if she'd given the old Harlock the same plausibly deniable censure. Whilst her tiny mouth didn't do shit-eating-grin, her third eyelids flickered as she stared me right in the eye and dared me to deny that'd I'd ever pull such a stunt..

'Define "straight-away"…' I asked. As though it's _my _fault people keep trying to shoot at us.

'With the crap we've pulled on the power couplings over the past few days? Not to mention we're still getting glitches in the coolant transport?' Yattaran snorted. 'We'll be lucky if we can keep half the main battery powered up for fifteen minutes if we get tangled up in the first couple of hours.'

'Good enough,' I replied curtly. 'Doppler's fleet isn't exactly top of the line. Some of them make those mazone battleships look robust - if it takes us that long to take them out, we're slipping. And Leopard is supposedly bringing at least four ships with him. He's always so keen on pointing out the superiority of the official military…'

'Even Leopard might struggle if they _have _sent Luger,' Hannibal pointed out. I laid my hand on a well-worn baluster and smiled coldly. '_I'm _not Leopard.'

'Oh bloody hell,' Nero muttered. 'It's genetic…' He grinned at me toothily, and I studiously ignored the bait. 'However in my opinion, the more firepower you can bring to a fight, the better. Can you wait an hour for our self-repair to finish? We got hit a little harder than you did, and I'm not keen on dropping out of normal space with our arses hanging out of our britches. Plays havoc with the life support for one thing until the big holes are sealed.'

I nodded my assent. Apparently the _Arcadia's _dark matter repair system was a lot faster than her sister ship's - but then, she'd absorbed a much greater amount in the original disaster… something Tochiro was practically dancing on tippy-toe to compare when he had the chance. 'Down boy…' I murmured to my ever-present ghost.

_Sorry… but how often do I get a chance to see something like this? _

I shushed him, because Nero was still talking. '...and on the way, we can discuss the finer points of _teamwork _when tag-teaming battleships,' he added, and left the field of the cameras before I could think of a suitably pithy rebuttal.

'Arse,' Kei muttered into a double handful of kittens.

_He's got a point_, Tochiro said, blithely unaware of the danger he was in. _Neither of you is used to fighting alongside ships of comparable ability, and Yanez wasn't expecting that move we pulled, although he seems able enough with making it up as he goes almost as well as you do_…

'I do _not _make it up as I go!' Kei's indignant squawk annoyed one of the kittens, and a little tabby furball hissed in her face.

'I think he means me,' I told her. 'That's about the only difference in our tactics. You don't like surprises, or people inconsiderate enough not to follow your battle plan…'

Two small balls of fluff were shoved into my chest and I got a claw through a glove for my pains in holding onto them. 'So I'm rigid and inflexible?' she asked tightly.

'That's the captain's job, innit?' Yattaran should know by now to keep his mouth shut. His filthy snigger sputtered to a stop almost as soon as it reached his fleshy lips.

I mentally counted to ten. And refused to take either piece of bait. Somedays, my self control deserves its legendary status… 'Just get us ready to IN-SKIP. Kei - get me the tightest course you can plot. Maji? Mimay? Every bit of extra speed you can coax out of the engines would be appreciated. Gun crews and weapons stand down for now. Yattaran?'

'Cap'n?'

'Self-repair?'

'Got a few nasty scrapes, and there's a leak on deck five near the port nozzle. Just an access corridor, but it's taking its sweet time.'

'The dark matter weapons of the _Phantasma _negate our healing capability,' Mimay added in her soft voice.

'Is there anything we can do about that?' I didn't like losing one of our biggest advantages. Against normal ships we could take damage that would cripple anything else. Against our own kind - or worse - that was a levelling of the playing field I didn't like.

Actually, I don't like losing _any _advantage.

Mimay opened her tiny mouth in what was obviously going to be a "no", because we have had this conversation before. Freya - who I'd forgotten was still on hololink - as was the holosuite of the _Miranda _which overlapped slightly with her fuzzy image - answered first.

'I've got a couple of ideas about that, but we're going to have to bring Yngwie in on it, when we get back to Ventimiglia.'

I turned and smiled at my young nibelung ward. Young… well… that's relative. 'I forgot you were still online.' Freya was the only one in shot, unless you counted Ali on the other link, who smirked at me. 'Ali - take that face away before Luna spots it and tears a strip off me for getting you beaten up again. Freya - if you have something we can use to level the playing field, I'll happily soften the stuck-up prig up for you.'

'Oh… I think Mimay and I can deal with him,' she said breezily. Mimay, standing next to me, didn't look quite so confident. In fact if Nibelung's had such an expression I'd have said she looked a little sick at the thought. Hardly surprising… dealing with human reaction to her mistakes was one thing. One of her contemporaries and someone directly affected by the fallout? I didn't envy her.

I nodded to Freya. 'I'll leave it in your hands.' She smiled prettily and cut the connection, leaving Ali's scarred, battered face leering at me. 'Anything else?' I asked him. 'Or are you just missing me?'

'Love…' Martinez warbled in a theatrically dreamy voice from below. 'True love…'

'Fuck off, Esteban,' Ali called out cheerfully. 'Captain - can you patch me through to sickbay? I need to talk to Luna. Got a lot of stuff to send her way about this cloning facility she'll need to take a look at. She had some contacts back on Lar Metal we could do with bringing on board. This stuff's wicked complicated and those medics of Nero's are in way over their heads.'

'Yattaran?'

'Yeah, yeah. Switching him through.' A meaty paw was waved in my direction whilst he leaned over his console and pushed buttons with the other. Ali's battered face vanished from view and the projectors powered down. I placed the kittens back in my chair and tapped the bird's beak as he leaned down to peer at them, almost toppling off his perch on the back of the skeletal frame. 'Behave. No eating the cats.' It cawed indignantly at me as if to say "would I?" and suffered one of the little fluffballs to swat that foot long protuberance. I tapped my shoulder. 'Come on.' One beady eye blinked at me, then hit cawed again and hopped over to land with a thud on my right shoulder, where it balanced precariously as it started preening under one wing. 'Mimay - a word…'

I walked with her to the glowing ball of light that controlled the dark matter engine. The organ-like array spanned overhead in a huge arc. I still sometimes expected it to start blasting out a baroque fugue everytime it started up. The bird stuck its beak out and nuzzled her cheek, to which she responded with an affectionate rub. 'Forget it,' I told the silly thing. 'There's no way in hell she's able to hide any treats in that outfit.' It ruffled its feathers gainst my hair and settled down to grumble quietly into my ear. Blue lightning flickering in the depths of the crystal orb gravitated towards the hand I reached towards it, careful not to actually touch it. Tiny wisps of the same blue drifted towards it from my fingertips, and writhed around my hand like St Elmo's fire. 'Reminds me a little of Layla Shura's giant crystal ball,' I said quietly. 'Would I see anything if I stared into this long enough?'

'When you stare into infinity sooner or later you see yourself staring back at you,' she replied enigmatically.

'The problem with looking at your own reflection is that you're always looking at a distortion, whether that's in a crystal ball or someone else's eyes,' I said softly. She glanced at me sharply, then lowered her head gracefully. Her hair fluttered in the still air of the bridge, moved by a wind only it could feel. 'We've all had to face up to our past sooner or later,' I continued. 'Now it's your turn to pay the piper, Mimay.'

She raised a hand and laid it gently on my scarred cheek, very briefly before letting it drop away again to rest on the surface of the control orb. 'It isn't just Yngwi.'

'Ah.' I reached out to cup her tiny pointed chin and tip her face upwards so I could look her in the eye. Like Kei, she's tall, it doesn't take much, but staring into those big, round, cat-like alien eyes still feels strange, even after all these years. 'You can hardly be held responsible for the Metanoids, Mimay. They were around aeons before you were even born.'

'Even your species has a concept of the sins of a people being the responsibility of their heirs…' she began.

'Ah. Well. On that score perhaps you need to speak to Hannibal, not me. Thanks to the Gaia Sanction, the religions of Earth were long dead before my father was a glint in anyone's eye.'

She smiled slightly. 'Perhaps I spent too many long nights with Harlock… he was raised Catholic, and apparently they were particularly obsessed with the subject of sin… Personal and _original_...'

I'd heard a lot about that from Hannibal in recent years. It explained so very, very much. 'I take responsibility for my own mistakes. Should I forever be held accountable for the sins of my forefathers?'

She touched my scar again, featherlight, and ran her long fingers over the old blaster wound, from my cheek and across my nose, to where it vanished under the edge of the eyepatch that covered a useless eye. 'Accountable? Perhaps not. But you feel _responsible_, or else why would you fight so hard to repair…' she stopped in mid sentence, and tilted her head on one side like a little sparrow. 'That is the wrong word. I think… the future is built upon the past, there is no repairing it. That was his mistake. You… you seek to hold those responsible to account, and to create a better now… for only then can we hope for a better future. But when the sins of our past intrude upon that _now_…'

'Then,' I dropped a chase kiss on her forehead, 'I will explain the folly of their ways to them at great length, generally punctuated with very big guns if they don't get the hint. You aren't alone, Mimay. We know a lot more about what we're up against than we did forty-eight hours ago, and it might just be worth almost freezing my arse off and having hordes of alien-possesed zombies try to tear my arms and legs off. For now, one problem at a time. Get my ship into space, Mimay.'

She smiled again, more warmly. 'Aye, aye, captain!' I sighed. She always managed to make it sound as though she was humouring a small boy.

I walked back to my chair, and looked down into the seat, which was still occupied. 'Jiro!'

The youngest member of the bridge crew came bounding up the stairs, a dark-haired youth with the typically mixed melting pot ancestry of one of the many abandoned worlds harvested by the Machinners. 'Sir?'

I picked up the kittens and dumped them rather more gently than they deserved in his arms. 'Take these to Luna, and remind her that they're not supposed to be roaming around. Then stop off at the mess for supplies.'

I sat down with as much grace as I could muster and leaned back against the red leather upholstery, my hands gripping the arms where they curved over two fiercely grinning skulls. Before Kei could butt in I added without looking back; 'And Jiro?'

'Sir?'

'No matter what orders anyone else gives you, if you serve me decaff, there will be consequences…' At his console, Yattaran tried unsuccessfully to stifle a snigger and it came out sounding like a piglet snuffling in a trough. 'First mate?'

'Nuthin... nuthin..'

'You'd prefer a maudlin dipsomaniac at the helm?' I asked brightly.

'Might be a bit less jittery,' he opined. On the other side of the bridge Kei's left buttock, encased in tight red leather, twitched in the unmistakable way that suggested some eyerolling was going on.

'Just prep for departure and wait for Nero's signal. At least they can keep up with us, which makes a nice change.' I wanted to pick Mamoru up and squirrel him out of the way as soon as I could - assuming we weren't too late. I had to remind myself that he was surrounded by people as ornery and able in a fight as we were, and had Selen and Rei with him, both of whom I could rely on to watch his back, whether he appreciated it or not. At sixteen he was getting to an age where parental concern was starting to chafe. Whilst I did try to be as hands-off and supportive as I could - and all of my offspring, as well as my adopted waifs and strays, were better equipped than most their age to look after themselves - they were all at an age where they were growing up far too fast for my peace of mind. Thankfully his twin Wataru's only contribution to my sleepless nights was wondering if he'd be walking up the aisle with Selen's one and only daughter under his own steam or with Blaze and Selen's gravity sabres at his back. Well, that, and a career choice that could easily end up with him trying to place his parents in handcuffs… At least Nami…

No. Scratch that. My daughter was growing up far too fast and was already a beauty who'd be breaking hearts with a smile in a couple of years… Daughters were a whole different level of sleepless, as Hannibal had warned me, and having seen the clones of his gorgeous trio, I began to understand more and more what he meant. There was a wild streak in our family and even in the quietest of us it wasn't far below the surface.

_And you're happy for Wataru to marry into _Selen's _family_? Tochiro's sub-vocal giggle broke into my thoughts.

'Eavesdropping? Kanna's a nice steady girl…'

He snorted. _Selen and Rei led two planetary rebellions. Her aunt led another before deciding all life needed to be mechanised or else across two galaxies. Her cousins are too bloody scary for words… need I say more? Plus… Daisuke's got a thing for Nami… _

'Dai will be keeping _all _of his things away from Nami for the next few years if he wants to keep them,' I muttered back inside my head. I liked Blaze's little brother; like the rest of his family he was smart and had the makings of yet another capable fighter, but there's certain _niceties _involved here, and besides, I planned on getting my own back for the hell Blaze kept putting poor Wataru through regarding his intentions towards his baby sister…

_Think they're okay_?

The note of worry in my ghostly friend's voice was telling. 'Mamoru's an old soul, and a wily little bastard. Rei's plain sneaky and dangerous, and I'd trust Selen to protect them against anything - whether that's pointy-eared eugenicists or evil from the dawn of time. And Nero's people do seem nicely competent.'

… _but not so much_, that little worm of worry whispered into my mental ear, _if an entire fleet from Shaitan comes calling wanting their merchandise back_… I batted it away. Nero had left enough ships around that small planet to cope. Borrowing trouble brought nothing but heartburn.

… but they'd found one traitor. And in my long and painful experience, such beasts didn't tend to survive long outside of a pack… Like sawfly larvae, you turn over a leaf and you usually find a whole bundle of maggots writhing around tearing the plant apart piece by piece until only its fragile green bones remain…

'Yattaran.' Anyone who heard my voice probably thought it was totally devoid of any emotion. Anyone but Kei, that is, who turned sharply to look at me, frowned, and instead of turning back to her console watched me like a hawk, her arms folded across her ample chest. 'Make some time to get a lock on the relay around Ventimiglia whilst we wait for the Thunderbolt to get herself ship-shape.'

'Expecting trouble?' he asked, rubbing the back of his head. He grimaced as he dislodged his bandanna, and tried in vain to tug it back into place.

'Of course he is,' Kei replied for me, not taking her eyes off mine. 'You think they're being jammed?'

'Don't you?'

I'll need some extra power,' Yattaran said. I tipped my head to indicate the ethereal nibelung at the side of the chair. 'Talk to the boss. I think we can spare it.'

'Can you break it?' Kei asked him. In reply he cracked his knuckles.

'Heh. You still doubtin' after all these years? Doesn't matter how sophisticated the jammer, you can't kill a signal out here. We got the best countermeasures and comms hardware and software in the galaxy on this ship, and you got me. Watch and learn, sweetie. Watch and learn…'

'Maybe,' Mimay said softly in my left ear, 'there's no signal because nothing's happened yet…' I just _looked _at her.

'I can plot a deeper course in Imaginary Number space,' Kei said. 'If Mimay can get the power to the engines. Should shave the time down to thirty-six hours…'

'Talk to Nero,' I told her. 'See if he can get the _Thunderbolt _to match our depth.'

'_We _have more dark matter at our disposal,' Mimay pointed out.

'Then you have about - oh - fifty minutes or so to talk Freya through some upgrades,' I told her. Her doll-like face managed an expression remarkably close to the one I used to see on my mother's, when I was a child.

_If you're trying for enigmatic and stoic, I think you failed_, Tochiro sniggered as Mimay just sighed and turned back to her post. _I'd rate that attempt no higher than dispetic_.

Jiro arrived with my coffee at that point, which at least allowed me to avoid struggling to find a pithy retort and scuttled off the gantry so fast that I frowned and paused before taking a sip, my eye carefully fixed on Kei's shoulder blades.

Her right shoulder twitched. 'Kei…'

'Anita has orders, _Captain_. Mine.'

'You do remember that I metabolise…'

'Yes. But not so fast as alcohol, due to that being an actual metabolic poison...And we'll need you rested.'

'You need me _awake_,' I muttered. I sipped the coffee, and smirked behind Kei's back. Anita had handled a conflict of interest with her usual aplomb. I'd have to suffer decaff, but at least she'd spiked it with a large slug of something distilled over a century ago.

'Harlock?'

'Hmm?' I tapped the bird's beak out of the way as the daft thing tried to dip its beak into my mug. I looked at Kei with my best poker face in place.

'Are we ever going to tell Nero that we planned on tagging that Phantasma if it looked like we couldn't stop it?'

'That rather depends on whether or not the tracking beacon you threw at it works. And that the metanoids don't find it too soon...'

'Hope for the best, plan for the worst, eh, captain?' Yattaran asked with a nasty smirk.

'Just so, first mate.' It was a pretty safe bet they'd find it, but I was fairly sure they had to have a beachhead in this universe. I was also pretty sure I knew roughly where it was. But it never hurts to confirm these things. If we were lucky we'd have another chance at that damned phantasm once we'd cleared up the mess Nero and his people were in.

A mess that several people I cared deeply for were caught up in.

I took another slug of the whiskey and coffee, and settled back in the comfort of the captain's sneakily well upholstered chair.

It was going to be a long thirty-six hours.


	26. Chapter 25

_Ventimiglia_

Mamoru opened his eye and very quickly wished he hadn't. Bright sunlight streamed in through the mouth of the cave, Ventimiglia's slightly off-sequence star seemingly determined to rob him of his remaining eyesight. He blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the afterimage. Shaking his head, he found out, just made things worse, because it hurt like hell.

He also couldn't hear what the young woman kneeling at his side was trying to say as she helped him to sit up, because his ears were ringing. 'What?' If it came out sounding a bit snappish, he thought, at least he couldn't be held accountable…

'I asked if you were all right.' It was Hallie, shouting in his ear. He nodded back and gave her an OK sign with his left finger and thumb, and let her help him to his feet. 'Rei?'

Some of the ringing in his ears was starting to subside at least. _Yay for dark matter contamination_… He just about made out a faint "over here", and made his way unsteadily to where his friend leaned against the cave wall, trying to fend Ianthe off, as she tried to dab away the blood on his face from a nasty scalp cut above his right eye. Motherball, lights dimmed, lay at his feet, glowing intermittently. 'I'll take it,' he told the heavily pregnant young woman, taking the cloth from her hand. 'There are probably others who need you more.'

'You're saying I don't deserve the attention of a pretty girl?' Rei said, summoning up some attempt at levity with difficulty. Mamoru considered continuing to dab at the offending wound, but changed his mind and pressed harder. 'Damn it, Mamoru! Give me that!'

Mamoru ignored him and continued his ministrations amid a torrent of increasing abuse. 'Quit whining, Zero. Your head's your least vulnerable spot, according to Blaze and Dai…'

Rei grabbed the bloodied rag out of his hands before he made another swipe over the injury. 'Take your own damned advice and go help some of the others. You know I heal fast - on account of - you know - not being quite human?' He looked around. 'Holy shit…'

The machine had left a massive crater in front of the cave when it had exploded, white hot shrapnel still littered the beach and the black volcanic sand had fused to obsidian in places. Children were crying all around them, and some of the adults and teenagers looked more than a little shell-shocked. There were bodies outside the cave - he could see broken bodies and parts scattered over almost as wide an area as the machine. But most of the inhabitants of the cavern appeared unharmed, apart from a few cuts and bruises.

'We should be dead…'

'We would have been, if not for you and Boreas here,' Mamoru replied softly. He knelt down and laid a hand on the quiescent mechanical ball. 'That was quite some shield. There seem to have been a few people who didn't make it into the cave in time, but most of those bodies are wearing khaki, so I'm guessing they're Doppler's goons.'

'Wasn't just me,' Rei told him. He tried to push himself off the wall, and Mamoru had to catch him before he fell down, 'Shit.'

'Sit. You must have dug deep into your zero point energy reserves to pull that off.' Mamoru helped him to slump to the sandy floor next to Motherball. 'Which is dumb. Brave as all hell, but as dad would say, dumb.'

'It's not that bad - just tapping a load all at once is tough. And it wasn't just me,' Rei said again, staring past Mamoru, out of the cave mouth. 'I didn't have a prayer of containing that explosion, I just tried to block off the entrance - and even then, the shock wave…' He looked around again at the cavern, where Nero's daughters were ministering to the injured. 'We should be strawberry jam…'

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring Mamoru's efforts to restrain him. 'Oh hell… Mom! Mom!'

Cursing his headache, Mamoru followed him out of the cave, as he staggered in the direction of the pier. Given Rei's weakened state he arrived behind him just as the older boy reached the breakwater and dropped to his knees with a wordless, agonised cry.

Platinum hair, no longer military, regulation length, flowing in the soft sea breeze, Leopard walked towards them slowly, a body held in his arms, cradled surprisingly gently by the usually cold, stern officer. As he came closer, Mamoru could see tears streaking his face, his eyes reddened from weeping.

Which was odd, he thought numbly, because Leopard was a stone cold bastard on a good day…

It took another couple of seconds to register that the limp form he held so gently was Selen.

'No…' he whispered. He took a couple of steps forward. Reached out a hand as Leopard stopped in front of him. She looked as though she was sleeping, a slight smile on her lovely face.

'She held back the explosion,' Leopard said without prompting, his voice harsh. 'Oh Lar, she tried to hold it back, and she wasn't wearing a crown…'

There was a burn across the man's sharp featured face, from his ear, across his left cheek and down his chin. His right arm - the artificial one - was exposed, the uniform fabric scorched and tattered, the inner workings exposed, at least one servo severed. Mamoru reached out, ignoring the snarl that greeted his attempt. 'Let me take her,' he said firmly, in his best imitation of his father's calm manner. His voice still had a tendency to waver a little so the effect wasn't as authoritative as perhaps it could have been. 'Commander? Please?'

'I'll take her.' Rei was on his feet, his sharp-featured face bleak. He reached out for the woman who had taken him in as her own, and after a silent exchange with the older man, lifted her from his arms and drew her close. Relieved of his burden, Leopard stood with his damaged arm now cradled by his good one, and stared blankly at the scene around them as Rei walked away, back towards the cave, his back ramrod straight. Pale green lights flickered around him as he moved, almost like an afterimage.

'Commander?' Mamoru, not normally moved to feel much beyond irritation at the former commander of Promethium's fleet, felt he had to break that terrible silence with something. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. 'Someone needs to take a look at that arm…'

'It can wait. It's been dead for years.' Leopard looked down at him as though seeing him for the first time. 'Harlock's son? Mamoru?'

'Because we're so hard to tell apart?'

Leopard laughed harshly. 'The mouthy one.' He raised a hand to his face, only for it to be stopped partway by Mamoru.

'I wouldn't touch that burn. It needs a dressing.'

'Burn?'

Mamoru led him over to the breakwater and sat him down. He flagged down a passing soldier in a blue uniform and told him to send for a medical kit. Then he sat down beside Leopard, and waited. Inside…

Inside, he felt numb. Part of him wanted to go running after Rei, feeling for his friend. His own grief was sort of... walled off inside… His most coherent thought was to wonder how his father and mother were going to take the news, and the only answer he had was "badly". 'What happened?'

'Saw her holding it back… knew she'd be in trouble. She was down when I got there… her and a man I didn't recognise. Then it was as though a searing wind came at me from off the ocean… Didn't stop to think, just picked her up and got the hell out.'

When Mamoru got to work with the burn kit someone trotted up with, he said nothing for several minutes, as Mamoru cleaned his face. _Were those tears leaving clear trails through sand, dust and blood? Who'd have thought it_. 'Fuck. Why did they have to do that? Throwing their lives away, and for what?'

'For a man who did just that a couple of years back, that's a question you should be able to answer,' Mamoru replied a little more tartly than he'd intended. Don't bait the bear, his father would have told him. But Leopard was well past taking offence.

'_She _should have been my queen…' Leopard whispered. And in that statement, Mamoru realised part of what drove the man.

'You poor bastard…' he murmured. 'You loved her too?'

Leopard didn't look at him. 'Who didn't? Who wouldn't? Farah was destined for Promethium, but _I _would have been _hers _\- if she hadn't thrown it all away, walked away from her destiny.' He laughed coldly. 'Promethium spurned one brother for a homely ephemeral, and Selen…'

A gust of wind almost tore the bandages out of Mamoru's fingers and he swore under his breath. 'You're not wrong about those winds,' he said quietly. The light was changing as well, but when he looked at the sky, there wasn't more than a faint trace of a storm cloud, except near the _Tonnerre_, floating calmly at anchor in the caldera's deep waters, and there was something about that that he felt he should remember…

Footsteps in the sand drew his attention before he could get a rip on the wispy thought, and he looked up from securing the fluttering dressing across Leopard's face to see two people walking towards them. A young man, average all round, a fur hat pulled down over curly brown hair that refused to be contained and stuck out at the sides, and a tall woman who appeared to be about the same sort of age, but was, he knew, several years older. Whilst the young man was busy pulling off his jacket and yanking that ridiculous hat off his head to stuff into his pants pocket, she strode down the beach in scarlet and black flight leathers, gravity sabre on one him, cosmo dragoon on the other, and her long strawberry blonde hair flowing around her shoulders. She held herself like a queen, but then - why not? She was after all a princess…

'Frank?' It was hard to tell with Emeraldas if she was asking if he was all right, or asking him what the problem was. Mamoru decided the answer was probably "both", since she didn't tend to waste words. He nodded a greeting to Nazca, whose cheery grin in reply slid off his face as he looked at the scene.

'What…?' he began.

Leopard stared up into Emeraldas' eyes and said just one word. 'Selen.'

Emeraldas' wordless cry echoed Rei's of a few minutes previously. 'Where?'

Mamoru found himself wishing at this point that one of the grown-ups would show up and take over. 'Rei took her back to the cave. I think… I think he could use…'

She didn't run. Far be it that the empress' stone cold, unloved, unwanted daughter would ever _run_, but her strides were longer and faster than those she'd taken walking towards them.

Nazca sat down beside Leopard, pulled his cap out of his pocket and started twisting it in his hands. 'What happened?'

'I'm not really sure…' Mamoru began. Leopard cut him short. 'There was a death-machine of Doppler's - took a hit and fell off the cliff, right where the refugees are sheltering. She reached out… contained the explosion with her TK, but without a crown… without the amplification, she had to dig too deep.' He slammed a fist, still encased in a formerly white glove, into his thigh. 'Dammit, she knew better than that. All the queen candidates are taught - without the crown...even _with _them… it's too dangerous. She was right there when Yayoi almost killed herself shielding that island that blew its top during that last pass of the black hole…'

Feeling uncomfortable watching a man so famed for his composure so close to losing it, Mamoru got up and moved away from the breakwater, leaving Nazca - who knew the man rather better and could probably offer more in the way of moral support than a sixteen year old youth - to say a few words in private.

He rubbed away the tears that fell from his remaining eye, scrubbing his face as hard as he could as though trying to erase the evidence. Salt in the air, he told himself, knowing it for a lie. The legendary family stoicism was eluding him.

He didn't want to think about it right now. He wanted - in no particular order - Taro, Wataru, his mother, his father, and yes, his baby sister. He wanted Selen back, standing next to him, her arm around him, telling him it was all just a big mistake. And Uncle Zero… grinning at him from under his dark glasses, ruffling his hair and telling him everything was going to be just fine.

'But it isn't fine,' he whispered to himself. 'It hasn't been fine in a long time…' Without thinking, he rubbed the skin under his eyepatch. It itched terribly in the heat. Distracted by the irritation, and his vision blurred with tears he couldn't stop, he could perhaps have been forgiven for not noticing the man striding towards him until he was almost on top of him. Tall and broad shouldered, wearing just a pair of tight shorts, his longish blonde curls bouncing slightly against his bare tanned shoulders.

David, he realised, whilst the man was still about twenty feet away. Mamoru raised a hand in greeting, or at least began to.

_She was down when I got there… her and a man I didn't recognise._

The clone of Henry Douglas lacked his usual wide grin, but under the circumstances, that wasn't unexpected. There was something about his eyes though… normally a blue almost as vivid as his mother's… they seemed blank, cold… like the depths of the sea, not the glittering surface...

And then he remembered the significance of the storms.

'David!'

Galene's voice, full of relief, came from close behind Mamoru.

David's hand had barely begun to raise the pistol he held when Mamoru's Nambu drilled him right between those cold steel eyes - _metanoid _eyes - and the reboot fell to the ground. Mamoru had barely enough time to turn and throw himself onto Galene, pushing her to the ground underneath him, before the thing exploded.

And having peeled himself off the bikini-and-sarong clad lovely now sobbing against his shoulder as he patted her bare back awkwardly, he had to wonder just how much more shit was to head his way today.

* * *

Rei didn't even raise his head when the second, smaller explosion sent people scurrying to the entrance of the cave, weapons drawn. He knelt beside the body of the woman who'd been a mother to a scared, angry little-boy-who-wasn't so many years ago, and held one slender, cold hand in his own. 'I can't cry,' he whispered as Emeraldas knelt next to him. 'Did they make me so wrong I can't cry?'

'Then that makes two of us,' she replied, her voice rough and throaty. Her arm was just touching his, and he could feel it trembling- whether from the effort of holding back grief or anger, he couldn't tell. It didn't make much difference either way. The results would be the same: Somebody, somewhere, would be paying dearly for today. The only question would be who'd get there first. 'Huh. Something's wrong…' She stood up abruptly, her gaze snapping towards the entrance. Several of Nero's people shoved past her, one of the O'Malley twins the only one bothering with a muffled "excuse me" as he ran to the cave mouth, yelling for everyone to take cover.

'What the…'

Ianthe approached her before Rei could warn the pregnant woman off. 'If you are any good with those…' she nodded towards Emeraldas' holstered dragoon and sabre 'then please - we'll need every weapon we can get.'

Never one to waste time on the niceties she nodded once. 'Zee?' He heard her, but it was an effort to tear himself away from Selen's serene form. 'Hey! Mourn later, Zee. Firefight.'

He almost - _almost _opened his mouth to reply that he'd drained himself to the point he could barely stand up, but this was Emeraldas, and so long as he could be propped up against a wall and point a pistol at the enemy, she'd offer little in the way of sympathy. Sometimes he wondered which of them was the synth… 'Get me over there,' was all he said eventually, and with a sharp nod she placed an arm around him and helped him over to a large rock, behind which three people were already sheltering in between bursts.

'I thought we got them all?' Rei asked, spotting Dione slapping a replacement cap into her pistol.

'Doppler's men retreated, but we've got reboots incoming…'

Two more dropped beside them, scattering sand over everyone. 'They got David,' Mamoru said shortly, giving Galene a push towards her sister. 'Nazca and Leopard are heading back to the fighters, told us to stay put - anything on the beach in the next five minutes is going to be slagged.'

'Reboots?' Emeraldas asked in between shots. 'That would be the people lurching towards us with the blank eyes?' Rei popped his head over the rock long enough to get a bead on one and dropped it, drilled between the eyes. Doppler's soldiers had taken a lot of casualties it seemed, judging from the number of khaki-clad corpses lurching towards their position. In amongst them however were far too many faces he'd seen around the place over the past days. And to top it off… well, he supposed those brains in the battlebots must by definition have been sort of "dead", so of _course _organic tech would be open to sequestration, wouldn't it.

'Long story. It's a metanoid thing.' He told her. He wondered if that extended to synthetic cells...

'Metanoids? They can take over people now?'

'Dead ones,' Mamoru added. Then all three of them looked back to where Selen lay. 'Oh… shit…'

'I'll do it,' Rei said quietly. He handed Mamoru his pistol. 'Motherball and I can do this much, at least.'

'Zee…'

Rei shook his head and handed over his last two energy caps to Mamoru. 'Help hold them off. If anyone's going to do this, it should be me - might as well do the rest if there are any?' He scuttled back into the depths of the cavern, keeping low and behind the rocks for cover, until he reached Ianthe, who was busy shouting orders to a group of decidedly makeshift medics. 'Ianthe?'

It took a couple of tries to get her attention, and he briefly laid out the new situation.

He had to hand it to her, she cursed like a sailor. 'You're right… we can't take any chances… I'm so sorry, Rei. She seemed an amazing woman. Are you sure?'

'You need the bodies destroyed at the cellular level. If you can gather…'

'Everyone but your mother's already at the back of the cave, but we don't have anything we can use. Tony?' She caught the attention of a youth in his late teens. 'Bring Lady Selen over to the holding area - gently, please.' She turned her attention back to Rei. 'Please - if there's something you can do…'

Rei reached out a hand without looking back. 'Mother,' he called softly. Silently, glowing very faintly, Motherball floated over to them.

'Can you do this?' Ianthe asked. She laid one hand on his shoulder. 'You look pale, and your ball here…'

'My first mother,' he said, reaching out to touch her. Green lights blinked slowly and faintly under his fingers. 'My makers cannibalised parts of her form and her software to make me. We're kind of… attached.' The ball drifted within reach of his arms and he hugged it to his chest. It didn't help with the hard knot deep inside that felt as though it was drawing tight around his heart. 'It won't need a blast - we just have to loosen the bonds at the molecular level.'

Slowly, so as not to cause a reaction similar to that of the metanoids when they let go of their cellular hold on their bodies, he linked with Boreas and sent a wave of zero-point energy to wash over the - thankfully small - group of bodies, then use Motherball to convert the released energy back to zero point and absorb it, before it caused a reaction. It was harder than he'd let on, and they were both drained, but through Motherball he could at least draw on the energy released by the mass conversion for power and use it to contain the rest and let it bleed away safely. And really, as the glow faded and dust settled to mingle with the back sand on the cave floor, it should have been a lot harder to erase the existence of people who only a few hours earlier had had the whole of their lives in front of them.

'I have to…' He struggled to get to his feet, but Ianthe held him back with ease.

'You've done your bit. Shush. It's okay to cry.'

She held him as closely as Selen might have done, smoothing his hair and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. Which was wet, he noticed idly.

With Motherball in his lap and his head on Ianthe's shoulder, in the darkness of the cave, he wept.

* * *

_Arcadia_

We came out of Imaginary Number space in our customary cloud of dark matter, which cleared from the front viewscreen to show the planet looming much too close as we frantically tried to dump delta vee. In cosmological terms we were slamming the brakes on hard, and I could feel the strain the ship was under as we did the equivalent of sliding to a stop with inches to spare before we hit a wall. At least, that's the mutterings I could hear from my first mate, who was bracing himself against his console, probably white-knucked inside his gloves.

'Really, Yattaran?' I leaned casually on the wheel. 'You do know we have inertial dampeners?'

'Yer cut that one a bit too fine,' he grumbled, pointing at the blue marble filling the viewscreen.

Since we were actually about half an AU away and drifting in nicely, I chose to ignore him. 'Kei? Anything on the scanners?'

'Transponder readings from ships behind the planet match the _Medusa _and the _Queen Emeraldas_. I've got two other vessels in pursuit of something matching the description of a Satan-class warship, which is trying to make an IN-SKIP jump whilst leaking energy signatures all over the spectrum…'

'Leave that to Leopard's people,' I told her. 'It should be within their ability.' Laughter from the lower bridge was faint and muted. 'What about the planet?'

'The EM field's down, I think they've taken some fire on the island. I've got multiple energy readings though from that ocean caldera holding the transports - a lot of small spikes and at least four fighters in the air.'

'Harlock?' Nero's voice on the comms hailed me. 'I'll take the island, if you can check out the caldera?'

I didn't waste time arguing - that was, after all, where my son and my friends had been going, to help with the clone storage issues. 'Kei - with me. We'll take the fighters.'

'Want any backup?' Yattaran asked. I shook my head. 'Franz and Esteban are still recovering. It looks as though they're just mopping up, so we'll be fine with two - if I need any more, I'll shout.'

'Just make sure you keep all sensors at max,' Kei warned him as I fell in beside her to head for the stairs. 'And get Franz up here to take my post…' I took hold of her arm and gave her a hard tug to keep her moving. 'And don't…'

'Kei?'

'What?'

She doesn't snap at me that often these days, I don't take it personally. 'They can do their jobs.' I gave her a little push and she stumbled slightly.

'But…' She gave one last, almost despairing look over her shoulder as we descended, and I kept one hand on her back all the way down. 'We don't know how bad it is down there, stop borrowing trouble.'

No. At that point in time I _didn't _know how bad it had been, but we were of course far too late.

We always had been.

* * *

The speed the Space Wolf can reach from orbit to the lower atmosphere is something that never gets old. The fighter is as much at home in atmosphere as it is in space, and whilst it can only attain a fraction of its vacuum speed in air, it outflies most surface to air fighters by a considerable margin, and handles like a dream. They're horribly misnamed, because they're not wolves, so much as birds of prey, soaring effortlessly and taking down their prey with insolent grace. Doppler's battle cruiser had left a handful of fighters behind and the clumsy, lumbering machines were plucked out of the air by our guns like fat pigeons before they even saw us coming.

The _insector _fighter that they'd been about to take down hailed us with a grateful welcome that I waved off. 'Got caught with your britches down? Oh wait… you guys have to fly those things buck naked, don't you?'

'Like I never hear _that _one, Harlock,' the voice that came back sounded mildly irritated. 'Ever try out some new material?'

That sounded suspiciously like Leopard's wing commander. 'Bernbarell? Since when did Frankie-boy persuade you to drop your pants in a good cause? Nevermind. Can you give me the sitrep - what's going on down there?'

'A few stragglers from Doppler's ship, but there's something else going on down on the ground. The commander asked me to get my arse down here…'

'...so you took him literally and left your pants behind?' I deadpanned. Insector ships are fast and deadly, but they're organic, and filled with an oxygen rich emulsion that's an acceleration buffer, a liquid neural conductor, and breathable. But here's the kicker - you have to fly them naked. Cover your modesty with as little as a thong, and forget keeping control of the damned things.

'You don't know?'

The tone sobered me up pretty quickly. 'Bernie…'

'They've got zombies down there - or something like it. We've got orders to firebomb the beach. Place is infested.''

'Where are Nero's people in all of this?' I snapped.

'Hiding in a cave - they're pinned down.'

'And that moron gave the order to do what exactly, with civilians in the area?' I was already heading below 10,000 feet even as we talked. 'Belay that order - without a shield you'll fry whoever's in that cave.'

'The ship's anchored in that caldera as well,' Kei pointed out. 'Scanning now. I make several dozen warm bodies on the beach, and about two hundred cold ones moving. They're in the middle of a pitched battle.'

'What's Leopard's plan?' I asked Bernbarell sarcastically. 'Kill them all and hope some benevolent deity will sort them out?'

'He's down there himself…'

'Oh. And _that _makes it all right…' I muttered as I cut the transmission. 'Kei?'

'Plotting a course. We can't fire into that mess.'

'Wasn't planning on it. Can you raise anyone?'

'Negative. The energy spikes are playing hell with reception.'

'Then we drop down behind those rocks to the east, and take the rifles. Once we take a few out with the long guns, hopefully Nero's people will get the message.' I sighed. 'Not enough I have to deal with these things in a freezer, now I have to get sweaty…' I put the space wolf into a landing approach and dropped her down neatly onto the flattest piece of real estate I could find, Kei dropping in behind me. 'And Kei?'

'Tell the boys to get down here?'

'Get them to bring Anita. I rather feel the need for a very big gun beside me on this one…'

* * *

A couple of hours later, as chunks of an unlucky insector ship rained down on us where we sheltered, hot, sweating and fondly reminiscing mentally about the same running battle fought only a few days ago on an ice planet, I at least could thank my forethought for having my cook along. A former SPG gunnery sergeant, Anita was a formidable figure in our heavy, rotund armour, especially when wielding the servo-mounted rail gun that had just taken out a rebooted organic insector fighter…

'Organic ships?' She lowered the weapon to its resting position on its swivel mount and tutted. 'They'll be wanting to rethink _that _particular tech…'

'Zombie battleships… now there's a thought I'd rather not have,' Kei added, from near my left knee. I brushed a piece of slimy hull - at least, I hoped it was hull - off her armoured shoulder. 'Tell me that was the last of them?'

I tapped the commlink at the side of my helmet. 'Yattaran? Anything on the scanners?'

'Negative, cap'n. I think that's the lot for now - unless those sunken transports are harbouring any surprises…'

I was pretty sure they'd held at least one… 'One horror story at a time, first mate,' I told him. He cackled. Well, so he might - since he'd managed to avoid both recent running battles since he was pretty indispensable on the bridge with me off ship. I flicked slime off my sabre rifle and pulled a face inside my helmet. Some unlucky sap would be cleaning this stuff out of the cracks in my armour for a week. 'Ladies, I think we can make our way down to the beach.' I started moving only to be pulled up sharply by Anita, her spiked gauntlet clamped around my arm.

'And just where do you think you're going?'

'Down. To. The. Beach.' I replied very slowly and carefully. I tried peeling her metal fist off my arm but the old, brassy diving suits have much stronger servos than my lighter, valkyrie style armour.

'Taking point?'

'I'm the captain,' I pointed out, not unreasonably.

'Precisely why you should put someone else in front,' she pointed out, very reasonably.

'How many times do I need to have this argument?' I muttered as she pushed past me, swivelling that monstrosity attached to her suit-mount belligerently as she strode down the rocky path.

'Not nearly often enough if it still needs hammering into your thick head that getting yourself shot at isn't part of the job description,' she called back. '_Sir_.'

That'll teach me not to turn off the comms…

Kei was equally unsympathetic. 'You don't have to charge full tilt into _every _situation, you know.' She gave me a shove in the small of the back that sent me stumbling slightly, and strode past me, a delightful sway in her armoured hips.

'And yet… here you are, right up there with me,' I drawled.

'Where else would I be?' she shot back. 'I couldn't live without you.'

To which there wasn't really a lot I could say. And pointing out the fact that I was now bringing up the rear, which wasn't that much of an improvement over taking point, would probably not have gone down too well…

And that little exchange was the last bit of levity we were to have for some considerable time.

* * *

Yanez guided the little flyer around the caldera for a second time and swore under his breath as the sensors picked up the aftermath of the battle. 'How the hell did we get caught with our arse hanging out of our britches so badly? As if Doppler's hit squad wasn't bad enough, that shadow cloud's wreaked havoc down there!'

Nero leaned over the dash to look down through the viewscreen. 'There's something wrong with the _Tonnerre_… I'm getting odd readings coming from her vicinity… and is it me, or does it look like she's floating in air upside down from this angle?'

'_Fata Morgana_…' Carmaux said over his shoulder. 'Light refracted through a thermal inversion. I've got ghost images all over the sensors back here.'

Yanez snorted. 'Those are polar phenomena over cold water… You ever know the sea temperature round here to get that low?'

'Maybe the inversion is just that damned hot,' Carmaux replied smoothly.

'Take us in for a close pass,' Nero told Yanez. 'Harlock seems to have the shore under control, but if there's anything around the ship, it's likely to compromise the transports if it gets through the outer defences and down the docking tube.' To Carmaux he added: 'If it was that hot, would there be anything left of the ship?' To himself he murmured: '...and upside down in air were towers, tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours…' he shivered. 'Damn me if it hasn't got chilly in here…'

Yanez shot him a sideways look, but said nothing. The craft banked over the tops of the Tonnerre's masts, but they could see nothing on the deck below through a thick mist that seemed confined to the limits of the ship's deck, and stopped just above the top of her tallest mast. 'Illusions to the side, mist from above. That just isn't normal…'

'Life signs?' Nero asked. Carmaux checked the readings. 'Maybe twenty. And several bodies.'

Without needing an order, Yanez guided the small craft down to the beach, landing it next to the pier. Several figures were already running over to the craft almost before her engines had been shut down. At the top of the ramp as it lowered, Nero recognised Harlock in the lead, narrowly ahead of Kei. They reached the foot of the ramp just as he did. 'Harlock.'

'In case you hadn't noticed, something uncanny seems to have taken residence on your ship,' Harlock told him. 'There's a skiff, but we'll be sitting ducks out there on the way to it, unless you have any better ideas?'

Nero slapped him on the back and grinned at him. 'It's only about what - two hundred yards from the end of the pier? Surely you can swim that far?'

'And haul myself dripping wet, half naked, out of the water, climb up onto the deck of a three masted barque, and conduct a running battle with undead energy beings from a previous universe?'

'Well,' Nero said, not bothering to hide a smirk in his beard, 'if you put it like that… how are you with ropes?'

Harlock just smirked back. 'Pretty good, but now that I think about it, if we're coming in hot from above, don't you think that you and I can do rather better than _abseiling_?'

* * *

Well… it wasn't the first time I'd made a combat drop using only the gravity cloak to save me from an untimely attempt to decorate the ground. It was however the first time I'd done one in tandem. Firstly because gravity cloaks are in short supply these days, and secondly because finding someone as insane as I am isn't easy…

We were on board the Arcadia, simply because our messy, billowing dark matter cloud would hide our descent as it buzzed the Tonnerre, hopefully concealing us until it was too late. The plan was for us to distract the - whatever it was - cloud? Metanoid? Shadow? from the group who'd be heading out from the shore in an improvised motor launch courtesy of the inventive Nazca and the ship's skiff.

I settled my cloak onto my cuirass with Maji's help. The bird perched on Mimay's shoulder nearby, keeping up a running commentary, not at all happy that she had his legs in one hand, preventing it from taking up residence on my shoulder. Yattaran was helping Nero into his - shorter than mine, asymmetrical, but just as heavy judging from the way he shifted his shoulders occasionally as though to adjust the weight. We both wore black flightsuits and had cosmo pistols in one hip holster, and sabres in the other. I reached over and pulled the black, broad-brimmed hat adorned with a jaunty black feather off his head. 'I think that's just a step too far,' I told him. He just smiled, more from habit, I suspect. News of the losses on the caldera had hit hard for both of us, but we had no time to indulge in sorrow. 'It's a low drop, so we'll be going in fast. I hope you're not out of practice?'

'How many drops have you made, exactly?' he asked.

I didn't reply, mostly because it was in single digits, as far as combat went.

'That's what I thought.'

I ignored him and spoke to Mimay in a low voice. 'It's up to you and Freya to fine-tune the array to disperse that cloud…' We'd got a plan… flying by the seats of our respective pants as usual.

'You should really get clear - there's no telling what it could do to you, or to Khalsa.'

'We'll get the crew off. Leave it to us. From the readings they're huddled below decks, probably under guard.' I glanced over at Nero. 'He's been good in a fight so far, too late to wonder if he'll keep up?'

Her third eyelids flickered over her round eyes. 'Harlock trusted him with his life, once, and they went through a lot together before I met Harlock. If he regretted losing anyone outside of his family, or Tochiro, it was Khalsa.' She paused and then laid her hand on my chest, on top of the skull and crossbones painted onto the leather. 'Keep him safe, Harlock.'

'Trust me,' I told her, 'I don't want to lose anyone else today.' She bowed her head, and said nothing. The bird cawed half-heartedly at me, as though sensing the mood. I stroked its head and then strode away, back to my partner in insanity.

'Ready?' I asked him.

'Hell no… but that never stopped me.'

'Then let's get this thing.'

Under my feet I felt _Arcadia _hit the atmosphere, and then we were diving down to the ocean surface.

* * *

The high altitude combat drops are easy compared to what we had to do… the Arcadia flew in low over the ocean, heading straight for the Tonnerre, and we had to calibrate our trajectory and speed to hit something that was comparatively the size of a gnat, without getting tangled in the damned rigging even if we did hit the target. Oh, and visibility all but non-existent thanks to jumping out of a dark matter cloud, and into the hazy fog surrounding the sailing ship. Thankfully, we had help. With Tochiro plugged into both out cloaks' firmware, at least we didn't have to fly ourselves in on manual, as it were.

Even so, we both hit the rigging, and were forced to slide down the ropes to the deck, myself from the mainmast, Nero from the mizzen. We landed at about the same time on the wooden deck, the boards cracking under the impact, sabres out and hot as we'd cut our way down. I let go of the rope I'd been holding onto with rather more elegance than Nero managed, as he had to slice his way out of the last few feet and drop hard to the deck.

The mist that surrounded that ship didn't cover the deck, unfortunately, and the reanimated crew were onto us almost before we got to our feet. More proof, if we needed it, that the entire situation was completely unnatural.

'Like old times!' Nero shouted over his shoulder as he charged headlong into the six dead crewmen running towards him from the bow. I had my hands full with a group from the stern and couldn't manage much more than a grunt in reply, and the thought that the man was enjoying himself far, far too much…

Back to back, and side by side, we fought our way through, pistols and sabres making short work of the possessed men and women who attacked us. I held off the last handful as Nero pulled open the door that led down to the crew quarters, where we hoped to find the still living members of his crew. I stumbled through backwards, firing wildly at the last group of reboots, before Nero pushed the door closed and braced it with a nearby spike. 'That won't hold them for long!'

'Just as long as it holds.' I sheathed my sabre, it being too unwieldy in the close quarters below decks. ''I'll check the rooms, you head for the hold. Remember - we've got less than fifteen minutes before the _Arcadia _makes its return pass. We have to have everyone off the ship, and into that docking tube.'

Lucky for me he didn't stop to question who was giving the orders - since by both seniority and age, I was lagging well behind. He took off down the narrow corridor at an impressive pace, given the lack of headroom, and I began a room to room search for something I was really hoping not to find.

I walked into the wardroom to find I'd been half-right, at least. Yngwie's dead body lay on the floor, a neat hole drilled right between his wide open eyes. The nibelung woman standing over the body didn't bother to raise her weapon to cover me, though I didn't extend her the same favour. 'What happened - he wouldn't play along with you?' I asked. 'I lose my bet - I was convinced he had to be the traitor…'

Her weapon snapped up so fast I hardly had a chance to register it, and she fired…

...past my left ear, and took out the reboot that had been sneaking up behind me.

'Okay…' Now I was confused.

'You're half right.' she said in a softly fluting voice. 'Only I'm the one who wouldn't listen.' She trip-trapped over to me in the same manner Mimay did, alien and graceful. 'But I expect you're not inclined to believe me?'

'There had to be someone behind the metanoid attacks here… I was pretty sure it was Yngwie, more because it made more sense that a nibelung would be much better at coordinating it… Right now I only have your word that you're the good guy here. So…' I raised my pistol and aimed it at her delicately pretty face, and she stood so close to me I could almost extend my arm and press the muzzle against her forehead. 'Convince me.'

Nibelungs can't roll their eyes the way we can, but if she could have, I had the sense she would. She simply tapped my gun out of her face with an irritated sniff. 'From the conversation I heard between you and Khalsa in the corridor, I don't think we have time to indulge your paranoia. This ship is overrun with Metanoids…'

'Was…'

She slipped past me without so much as a by your leave and into the corridor, tripping along so fast I had to stride out to keep up with her. '...and the shadow isn't done yet. We need to get off this boat…'

'Ship.'

'Whatever.'

She was starting to sound like Emeraldas. Only taller, more willowy, and with pale pink hair. Maybe it was a redhead thing? 'Just who are you and where did you come from?'

Nero was heading back up the corridor, a dozen or so of the crew behind him looking the worse for wear. 'Maer!'

Well, that was one question answered…

'Where the hell… We looked for you, after… but Titan base had been cleared out.'

'A ship picked up my transport on the way to Titan from Pluto. I never made it back. The next thing I knew, I woke up with Yngwie standing over me,' she replied curtly.

'I guess we know what else those transports were carrying,' I told Nero, as we struggled to re-open the door we'd wedged so well a few minutes earlier. 'I wonder if Doppler was after her or the cargo?'

'Neither,' she replied, striding out onto the deserted deck. 'That would be…' she pointed her pistol at the darkening mists that writhed around the masts, shot through with that sickly green lightning.

'Well this is going to be a _fascinating _debriefing,' I drawled, fixing Nero with my good eye. Through the mists, the boarding crew appeared - Kei, Nazca, Emeraldas and two of Nero's daughters, who I still couldn't quite get straight, flanked by Carmaux and Yanez. 'Please tell me that that - ' I pointed at the fog - is all we have left to deal with?'

'Not for long,' Kei told me. 'The Arcadia's coming in fast, everyone to the launches!'

Yanez, Nero and I were the last to drop into the craft bobbing up and down alongside the _Tonnerre_, the rope ladders swaying as the ship rocked into the gentle swell. I could hear the ship coming - she does tend to announce herself with something of a roar half a planet away. Nazca was at the engine of our little craft, and soon we were bouncing along the top of the sea towards the platform that held the docking tunnel for the transports, and running like hell for the entrance.

The doors irised shut behind me, as the last in line, and we continued our headlong pelt down the old boarding tube, into the control centre for the transport power systems. Kei was already, with Nazca's help, bringing up the outside cameras for us to get a look at Mimay's handiwork.

It was a gamble, but then what wasn't with these things? The Arcadia, trailing black smoke like an ancient internal combustion engine long past its prime, came hurtling towards the tiny _Tonnerre_, her massive arching dark matter antennae uncurling into the double-helix formation, then expanding further into a large black dark matter around the ship grew wispier, and vanished, and as she reached the ship, it expanded out again and enveloped it. I would have sworn on oath later that something screamed as it passed overhead. And then our ship was heading back into space on a vertical twin plume of dark matter and fire, and the _Tonnerre _rocked gently on the sea, all trace of the green-lit mists gone.

Nero had Maer in a bear hug, and I was a little surprised to see the nibelung didn't seem annoyed by it.

'Well,' I said quietly to Kei as she joined me. I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her surreptitiously. 'At least he won't have a leg to stand on if he tries to keep Freya…'

She thumped me on the arm, and then twisted in my embrace until she had her head buried in my shoulder. 'Oh… you…' Then: 'Selen…'

I held her silently whilst she wept, and buried my good eye in her hair so that no-one would see my tears.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Two days later I stood on the edge of the wooden pier as the pale sun went down behind the sharp curtain of the caldera, watching the _Tonnerre _bobbing up and down as the waves lapped against her hull. Her sails furled, her rigging looked almost skeletal in the deepening twilight. The clank of metal on wood, keeping time like a metronome, clued me in to the fact that my self-imposed solitude was about to be invaded. Not Kei's footsteps - those I knew like my own heartbeat. I didn't bother to turn around. Whoever it was would introduce themselves.

'Blaze and the others are asking after you.'

Leopard. I'd have preferred Emeraldas, and that's saying something. 'I'll be along in a minute. I just needed a moment.'

'You've been out here staring at the sea for almost an hour.'

'Well I'm not sure I could look a few people in the eye right now,' I replied, a little acidly. He grunted, and I turned slightly to look at him. He'd let his hair grow since leaving the regular military - like mine it now curled around his metal collar, and looked a pale pink in the fading sunlight, having little to no colour normally.

'You don't get to take responsibility for this,' he said flatly. 'She made her own choices. We should all be so fortunate, to choose where, and how, and to make it count for something.'

'That's what she said to me, the night Zero died,' He was standing to my left, so I could look at him out of the corner of my one working eye. He didn't look convinced by his own words.

'It's how they lived their lives,' he said. 'I can honour that, at least. But I can never understand why they did what they did, for people who could never be worthy of such a sacrifice…'

'What you don't get,' I interjected, 'What you've never understood, is that it's not up to you - to any of us - to decide who is or who isn't worth dying for.'

'They're just clones!'

The impassioned outburst was uncharacteristic. It wasn't often that he let his calm, mannered persona slip. The man was an icicle in human form. In that he was a lot like - uncomfortably like - my dead brother. It was one reason I'd never really liked the man. 'So was she, Frank.' He flinched at the rebuke, even though I didn't raise my voice. 'You still haven't figured out who or what you're fighting for. You're still looking for a cause, and because of that you're still making judgement calls you've no right to make, and sacrifices of people you only see as pawns. You say she made her death count for something, then turn around and question whether it was worth it? You're missing the entire point.'

'Which is?'

'She made her _life _count for something. We all die, Frank. As you said - we don't always get to choose where, when or how - or why. That was the part you didn't quote back at me. That was what she told me about Zero. Why she could live with his death, no matter how hard it was to carry on without him. Not because his death mattered, but because his _life _did.'

His silvery eyes looked confused, a frown above those platinum eyebrows. I unfolded my arms and sighed. 'When you understand that, you'll understand that it's easy then to let go, to accept that some fights you just can't win, but you have to go anyway. When it counts the most. And when that time comes, it doesn't matter if you die for your own children or for someone else's. Because in the end, it's all the same.'

He laughed harshly, without humour. 'You sound like Hannibal.'

'Who do you think she learned it from?'

Neither of us had heard the man pad up behind us. The waves slapping against the wood had covered the sound of footsteps, since he wasn't wearing spaceboots, but soft shoes. In fact, I hadn't been paying much attention to anything for a while now, and had obviously missed the shuttle flying in. 'Hannibal.'

'Harlock. Kei said I'd find you out here.'

'If you'll excuse me…' Leopard turned to leave, but Hannibal placed a hand on his arm.

'You don't need to leave on my account.'

Leopard looked puzzled. One side of his face was still taut from an injury he'd taken earlier, but the other wrinkled in a frown. 'The two of you are family.. I don't…'

'We all knew and loved Selen, Frank. I think that counts for more than blood, here.'

He flinched again at the word, and tried hard to hide it. I wasn't sure why he bothered - we all knew he'd held a torch for a long, long time, even if the silly sod would never have admitted it if you tried to drag it out of him with one of our bullet craft.

'Stay, Leo.' Blaze walked up, and I stepped forward to meet him. The brother of my heart, if not my blood. The last now, that his father and older brother were gone. I stood only a couple of feet in front of him, mutely, because whilst I could find words to throw at Leopard, in his steel-eyed misery, for Blaze I could find nothing to say. He broke the silence. 'I was with Rei… he's taking it pretty hard. We all…'

He choked at that point, and I reached out a hand, a clasped shoulder quickly turned into a hard hug, which neither of us was ready to break quickly. 'Oh, Harlock… I thought I knew what it was to hurt so much I can't breathe… but nothing ever hurt like this…'

Over his shoulder, silhouetted on the rocky beach, I could see the tall figure of the man who'd gotten us into this mess. Nero - _Khalsa _\- standing proud and tall, his black hair whipped around his face by the breeze, the more dapper form of Yanez at his side. Keeping his distance, and then again, well he might. We still hadn't had that "talk".

I broke away from Blaze before it felt too awkward, and he, knowing me so well after all these years, turned to follow my gaze. 'Not his fault,' he said eventually, 'though I was tempted to remind him rather pointedly about the law of unintended consequences.'

A wailing, high pitched cry, like a yowling cat, split the air, and in spite of everything I smiled, albeit a little sadly. 'I think Ianthe just demonstrated some impeccable timing,' I said quietly. Remembering belatedly that one of us might have a different view on the subject. Hannibal smiled bleakly.

'Morgan will at least have something to take his mind off losing David.' And unsurprisingly, it was our older statesman who led the way back along the pier to shore. He was passed on the way by a running figure who ran towards us waving his hands and yelling.

'Hey! Harlock! Hannibal! It's a girl!' Ali called out at the top of his not inconsiderable voice. Unfortunately as he drew level and tried to stop, he forgot that the wooden decking was treacherously slippy underfoot, slid past me, and unceremoniously dropped into the sea arse first.

Hannibal stared down at my spluttering crewman and sighed. 'Isn't this the point where you mutter something about being surrounded by witless minions?'

I knelt down to offer my hand to Ali, and hauled him back onto the pier with Blaze's help, landing him coughing and gulping like a carp. 'I should be so lucky,' I muttered.

'Oi! I was just trying to cheer you all up a bit. Oh - and Ianthe wants to ask Blaze something. It's kinda personal…'

Blaze shrugged. 'Might as well see what she wants, I guess.' He wandered off a little too listlessly for my peace of mind. I turned my attention to Ali, who was grinning up at me.

'Ali… really? This is hardly the time…'

'She wants to call her Selene,' he gabbled out in a rush.

Hannibal leaned down and helped him to his feet, hauling him up with precious little ceremony. 'Does she now…' he said, very gently. His eyes met mine and we both smiled.

Leopard, largely forgotten, just stared at us. 'At a time like this?' he muttered.

I took a deep breath, and let it out again slowly. 'Sometimes,' I told him, 'you just have to take the little victories…' _Like Mimay's reunion with the sister she'd thought long dead… I wasn't sure I'd be prising the two of them apart any time soon. Who knew?_

Little Selene continued to greet the end of the day sounding most put out about the whole business, as the four of us headed towards the shore. A timely reminder that life went on, and, I thought, with a surreptitious stare at Hannibal's rigid back, that sometimes… sometimes, despite something being lost, it can be found again.

Life goes on… no matter how much it hurts. When the wind's in your face you turn and face it head on, and brace yourself. To do anything else is to surrender. There was another hole in our hearts today, and it wouldn't be the last before this was done. The metanoids wouldn't stop coming just because we lost a friend, a sister, a mother. They had a foothold in our universe, and allies.

Well. So did we. We'd had only one Deathshadow a couple of months ago. Now we had two. Three if you counted the _Miranda_.

They created death from death. We created new life even as we mourned those we lost.

I left my squelching crewman and turned to face Leopard. 'You want to know why?' I asked him. 'Why we fight? What we fight for?' I jabbed a finger in the direction of the squalling. 'That is at once the best and most annoying sound you'll ever hear. That's what it's all about. What we stand for. Me. Hannibal. Selen. Zero.'

'You have to be kid…' he snapped. Then I watched as he remembered. And really, he should have remembered… He'd been around for the aftermath. How a young Ra Andromeda Selenium, chosen as the next queen of Lar Metal, had snuck out of her shining, crystal palace to see how the other half lived. Had witnessed all the messy, painful, noisy delights of one of the natural born slaves that kept the elite in their shiny palaces giving birth - something the elite would never lower themselves to do… And it had changed her forever.

'I don't think he quite gets it,' Ali muttered as we watched Leopard slouch off in the opposite direction. I glanced at his face, still battered and bruised, several shades of purple and yellow. I winced as a particularly piercing wail split the air. 'Do you?' I asked.

He pulled his tee off over his head and started to wring it out, splashing the rocks at his feet. 'I _always _get it, captain,' he replied plaintively, as though hurt that I even needed to ask. 'We all do.'

'Can't ask for more than that,' I said as we walked towards the rest of the crowd gathered on the beach. Torches were being lit along the shore. Tonight, we'd mourn the dead. All of them, shades new and old.

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow we'd be putting our shoulders back to the wheel and figuring out where we went from here. To do anything else would make the lives of those we'd lost meaningless, and that… that was unthinkable.

But that was tomorrow.


End file.
